Smith - A Short History of Christian Theophagy

^^RY or PRiNCf^
îOGICAL SEW\*^
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN
THEOPHAGY
A SHORT HISTORY OF
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
BY
PRESERVED SMITH,
Ph.D.
CHICAGO
LONDON
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
1922
Copyright, 1922
The Open Court Publishing Company

Chicago
Printed
in the
United States of America
All Rights Reserved
THE TORCH PRESS

CEDAR RAPIDS
IOWA
TO
MY
SISTER
WINIFRED SMITH
with Gratitude and Admiration
PREFACE
On December
fore the
27, 19 15, I read,
American Society
of
by request, be-
Church History,
at
New
York, a paper on "The

its
Evolution of Luther's Doctrine of the Eucharist."
In that paper originated the present study; for,
with the understanding of the sacramentarian controversies of the Reformation, came the clear perannual meeting in
ception that the
dogma
repudiated by nearly
dogma
of the sacrifice of the mass,
all
the Reformers, and the
of the Real Presence, repudiated by
of them,
were
in
reality far
medieval scholasticism
some
more ancient than
that they were, in fact, the
teachings of the primitive church, and that, push-
our inquiry ever further back, they had

been derived by her from a pre-Christian, and
from a very remote, antiquity. The idea of the
god sacrificed to himself, that his flesh might be
eaten by worshippers thus assured of partaking of
ing
his
divinity, arose at the
dawn
of religion,
revived by the mystic cults of the Greeks, and
was
from
them was borrowed by Paul and implanted, along

with the myth of the dying and rising Savior God,
deep
in the soil of the early church.
Though
for-
eign to Jesus, whose beautiful, ethical, and almost
purely Jewish thought shines on us in
its
genuine
PREFACE
form only
in the
document known
to scholars as
Q the source of the sayings reported by Matthew
and Luke but not found in the other gospels

these
doctrines appealed so strongly to the mentality of
the early Gentile Christians, that they
were rapidly
adopted and became fixed in the ritual and creed

of the church.
The subsequent history of the eucharist is chiefly the record of attempts to rationalize a doctrine
that, after the first three or
vulgar
era,
four centuries of the
no longer seemed natural.
In transub-
stantiation, in consubstantiation, in the various ex-
modes
of
evolved by the Reformers,

forts on the part of reason
we
planations
of
the
the words: "This
is
my
to
the
real
see but so
presence
many
ef-
grasp the mystery of
body."
As, in the contro-
versies following Luther's revolt, the matter re-
ceived the most thorough discussion that
it
ever
received, the period of the Reformation bulks large

in the present
work.
After the sixteenth century,
was new or important was said upon the

subject. The Zwinglian theory that the bread and
wine were mere symbols was silently adopted by
most Protestants, by all, indeed, except a small
band who consciously clung to whatever was ancient and impressive in ritual and to the "credo quia
absurdum" in doctrine. Both among Christians and
little
that
rationalists the matter ceased to attract attention.
There have, indeed, been a few modern

tories of the eucharist by believers, but secular
his-
his-
PREFACE
torians have been content to let the subject
not worth study.
In
this
drop
as
they have been wrong;
Franz Cumont says in the introduction to

his Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and
Romans, the history of man's errors and failures
for, as
is
often as instructive as the history of his successes.
The
present study will be accepted,
hope, as a
field of comparative
by one who has no propaganda to
purely objective history in the

religion, written
spread, and no cause to serve save that of
ledge for
its
own
know-
sake.
was complete by the end

for various reapostponed
was
of 1915, publication
Though
the manuscript
After keeping the manuscript for nearly a

year, during which the brochure had the advantage
of being read and occasionally corrected by several
to whom I now tender my
learned theologians
The Society of Church Flistory returned
thankssons.
with the statement that they would publish

it, but the whole was too long for their
As I preferred to have it all
biennial volume.
published together, I sent it to Dr. Paul Carus
who, with kind alacrity, promised to bring out the
whole in book form as soon as peace was signed
with Germany. The first two sections were given
it
part of
to the
public in the Monist of April, 191 8, but the
rush of business due to the war, and the sad inter-
ruption caused by Dr. Carus's death, have post-
poned the publication of the whole until the present.

In the meantime, I have continued to study
PREFACE
lO
the subject and have revised the manuscript in the

For assistance
light of the most recent research.
in
reading the proof
am
indebted to
my
vîfe.
Preserved Smith
Cambridge
August 27, 1 92
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Bibliography
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
13
Praeparatio Evangelica
Paul and
Symmystae
Transubstantiation
CONSUBSTANTIATION
his
...
43
78
95
Luther
Carlstadt
Zwingli and Oecolampadius
23
99
122
.
-137
164
IX.
Schwenckfeld
BucER
X.
Melanchthon
183
VIII.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
Calvin
The British Reformers

The Last Phase
167
....
190
202
212
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S.
Reinach, and published
in
by
the Bibliothique de Propagande,
xi annee, Oct, 15, 1913.)
Preserved Smith: "The Disciples of John and the Odes of Solomon,"

Monist, April, 1915.
Preserved Smith and H. P. Gallinger: Conversations with Luther;
from the Table Talk translated. 1915.

"A Decade of Luther Research," Harvard Theological Review, April, 1921.
R. Smith: The Assertion and Defense of the Sacrament of the Altar.
Compyled and made by mayster Richard Smith. 1546.
H. von Soden: Griechisches Neues Testament, Handausgabe. 1913.
J. H. Srawley: "The Eucharist: To the Reformation," article in E.R.E,
Selections
Preserved Smith:
R. Stahelin: Briefe aus der Reformationszeit.
A.
M, Stoddart:
Paracelsus,
1887.
1911.
D. Stone: History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.

D. Stone:
The Reserved Sacrament,
Tabular View
of the Variations in the
Offices of the
2 vols. 1909,
1917.
Communion and Baptismal
Church of England 1549-62.
1842.
Taylor: The Real Presence, (In Works ed. R. Heber, 1839, vol.
9 and 10).
Taylor:
The Worthy Communicant {ibid., vol. 15).
J.
Texte und Untersuchungen, cited as T. & U.
Texts and Studies, cited as T, & S.
Theologische Studien und Kritiken, cited as T. S. K.
R. R. Tollington: Clement of Alexandria.
1914.
1912.
E. Troeltsch: Protestantism and Progress.
W. Tyndale: Treatises, ed, Parker Society, 1846 ff.
Vadianische Briefsammlung, ed. Arbenz und Wartmann, 7 vols.,
J.
1890
flF.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
21
M. Valentine: Christian Theology. 2 vols. 1906.

Venite Adoremus Bulletin, pub. semi-annually by
Dominican
the
nuns of the Monastery of the Holy Name, 2824 Melrose Ave.,

Cincinnati, Ohio.
O. Vogt: Bugenhagens Briefwechsel.
1888.
WiLLiSTON Walker: John Calvin. 1906.

P. Wappler: Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgrafen Philipp
von Hessen zur Tauferbewegung. 1910.
L. Waterman: The Primitive Tradition of the Eucharistic Body and
Blood.
Watt:
H.
1919.
"Eucharist in Reformation and Post-Reformation Times,"
article in E. R. E.
J.
Weiss: Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments neu

1906
iibersetzt.
2 vols.
f.
Weimar: Luthers Werke,
kritische
Gesamtausgabe.
Weimar, 1883
ff.
60 vols.
B.
J.
Westcott and
F. J. A.
Hort: The
New
Testament
Small ed. 1895.

de Wette: Luthers Briefe, 6 vols. 1828-56
in the Orig-
inal Greek.
W.
L.
M.
(6th vol. by
Seidemann).
G. P. Wetter: Altchristliche Liturgien. Das Christliche Mysterium.

Studie zur Geschichte des Abendmahls. 1921.
J.
Wyclif: De eucharistia
tractatus maior, ed. J. Loserth.
1892.
Zeitschrift
fiir
neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, cited as Z. N. T, IV.
Zeitschrift
fiir
Kirchengeschichte, cited as Z. K. G.
F.
Zimmermann: Die Abendmesse
in Geschichte
und Gegenwart. 1914.
Zorn: Historia Eucharistiae Infantium. 1736.

Zurich Letters, ed. Parker Society, 1846 ff.
ZwiNGLi, see Corpus Reformatorum and Schuler und Schulthess.
H. ZwiNGLi's Latin Works and Correspondence, ed. S. M. Jackson,
P.
vol.
I,
1912.
PRAEPARATIO EVANGELICA
I.
Those who have attended the celebration of a mass

have witnessed the most ancient survival from a hoary
There,
antiquity.
in
the often beautiful church,
gorgeous vestments, with incense and chanted

the priest sacrifices a
God
to himself
and
in
liturgy,
distributes his
be eaten by his worshippers. The Divine Son

spotless
is offered to the Father as "a pure victim, a
victim, a holy victim," ' and his holy body and blood
become the food of the faithful. The teaching of the
flesh to
on this point. The body eaten is the

same as that once born of a virgin and now seated at
the right hand of the Father; the sacrifice of the mass
is so
is one and the same as that of the cross, and
church
is
explicit
grateful and acceptable to
return for
all
God
that
is
it
his benefits, will expiate sin,
the wrath of the offended Deity
"from the
a suitable
and turn
severity of a
just vengeance to the exercise of benignant clemency."
All this goes back to the time when man was just
emerging from the animal; it is the most striking of the
The
instances of the conservatism of religion.
do
religious
more
the
historically
further back we go
many
our ancestors; the story of progress has been

But there was a preone of constant secularization.
historic time when there was nothing that we would
Behind the savage culture
recognize as religion at all.
we
find
The Missal: Canon of the Mass.

Catechism ofi the Council of Trent, transl. by
pp. 156
ff.
J.
Donovan,
1829,
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
24
that
we know, when
religion rules the tribes with a rod
of iron, there must have been a period when the grandsons of the ape were accumulating their theological
Their
ideas.
first
concept was not, apparently, that of
personal gods, but that of a vast mystery;
it
was the
weird or uncanny quality of certain things they did not

understand.
Along with this was the overmastering
power of
tribal custom.
and certain neurotics
They had
degree
instinct to the highest

^
the conservative
as children
and savages
to-day, they felt an imperative
need, the reason of which they could not explain, that
ways
things should be done in the
accustomed.
in the
The
real reasons,
to
which they were
of course, lay deep
laws of habit and imitation but, because they

this, they gave their acts a myster-
could not understand
ious sanction, the taboo.
idea of "mana," both of

ness,
and
i.e.,
was in this, and the related

them founded in the sacred-
It
mysteriousness, weirdness, of certain objects
germs of all religions lay. In the

ape-men were unable to conceive of
anything very personal and definite as god.
Not only
was the conception of a Being "without body, parts or
passions" impossible to them, but even an anthropomorphic god was too abstract. Nor was this period so
remote as we sometimes think. Just as in Latin the
word sacer^ meaning both "sacred" and "accursed,"
acts, that the
earliest stages the
Greek
was used with a far wider significance than we
should use the word "god." The fact of success was
a "god" and more than a "god"; to recognize a friend
after long absence is a "god"; wine is a "god" whose
retains the old connotation of "taboo," so in

ôs
3 S.
Freud,
Schriften zur
Ziuangshandlungen und Religionsiibungen.

2d ed., 1909, 122 ff.
N euros enlehre.
Kleine
body was poured out in libation
this mere poetry or philosophy;
to the
it
gods/
25
Nor was
was, to the speakers,
literal prose.
This earliest stage of theology was totemism, at

one time probably universal. The totem was a specially sacred thing connected, by some fancied resemblance,
at that period Church and State in
with the tribe
one. It was a sort of dreadful mascot; a thing, usually

an animal, that was felt to be akin to the tribe and
that could bring both

the treatment
it
bad luck and good according to

Ordinarily it was treated
received.
with reverence, awe and fear; it could not be killed or

annoyed. But at times when things were going badly,
or there was urgent need of stimulating the crops on
which the existence of the people depended, or the
bravery of the men or the fecundity of the women

which were no less essential, some more drastic form
of government regulation of totems was felt to be
desirable. How could the tribe absorb the good qualities of the sacred thing; its "mana," as some of us, or
"grace," as others would say?
Compared with the first mystics
who brooded over

Caliban was a
divine,
the
with
union
of
problem
the
flower
of a long
exquisite
the
gentleman and a scholar,
conwhole
Practically the
refinement by civilization.
tent of their experience, as far as it gave them any
suggestions of union, was food and sex. The "god"
must be either eaten, or united with his worshipers in
sexual intercourse.^ Both ideas have colored the lanG. Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, p. 26.
the
See A. Dietrich. Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1910, pages 121 and
see,
following. On sexual intercourse with deity in classical antiquity,
for instance, Alcestis, 839 Josephus, Antiquities, Chapter XVIII, 3, 4The analogy of sex in the union with God, witnessed by a thousand
4
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
26
guage and thought of
all
religions, including Christi-
anity.
The
god
we
in the
form of an animal,
are at present concerned.

Nilus, a hermit
St.
is
the one with which
The
classic
example of
works of
that found by Robertson Smith in the
is
it
eating of the sacred animal, or, later, of the
century of our
sacrifice
who
era.*^
He
lived on Sinai in the fourth

tells
how
the
Arabs would
boys to the Morning Star, but, when boys
would take a white camel, and after wounding

mortally, would suck its blood and eat its raw and
failed,
it
Robertson Smith thought of the camel

was partly wrong; it was really
only the raw material from which gods are madeu^
The animal was devoured to get its "mana," its
strength, swiftness and endurance, and doubtless other
more subtle qualities. For the savage thought of all
the original character passing over with the flesh and
blood. If bread could strengthen man and wine make
glad his heart,^ surely the brave, strong, sacred body
of an animal could impart its own excellence.''
The eating of an animal or in some cases a human
being in the same sacramental way, has been found also
still
living flesh.
as a tribal god; but he
"brides of Christ'' (cf. Mark ii. 19; Eph. i. 6 v. 32) is carried out by
Staupitz (T. Kolde, Die Augustiner-Kongregation, 1879, p. 291) and
;
{Vorlesung iiber den Romerbrief, Scfiolien, 206). On homosexual ideas in mysticism, cf. Pfarrer O. Pfister, L. v. Zinzendorf
(Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, VIII, 1910).
E. Bethe,
"Die dorische Knabenliebe," Rheinisches Museum, LXII, 3, pp. 438 ff,
Luther
1897.
6 J.
486
Murray, 35 f.
Psalm civ. 15. These words were quoted by Luther as applying
the bread and wine of the eucharist.
9
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3d ed.. Spirits, 1912, II, 138.
^
to
E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903,
f.
in Australia,'" in
Nigeria, and
27
among North American
Indians."
But the totem was not the only divine being eaten.
In the primitive sacrament of the first-fruits, the spirit
of the corn was thus absorbed by its votaries. Thus
to the present day, "the farmer's
the last sheaf to bake a loaf in
of
grain
the
wife uses
the shape of a little girl; this loaf is divided among the
in
Wendland, Sweden,
whole household and eaten by them.
Here
the loaf
represents the corn-spirit conceived as a maiden." "The

new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the
body of the
in
corn-spirit.'"^
Lithuania.
similar custom
is
found
^^
"In one part of Yorkshire it is still customary for

the clergyman to cut the corn; and my informant,"
says Sir J. G. Frazer, "believes that the corn so cut is
used to make the communion bread. If the latter part
of the custom is correctly reported (and analogy is all
shows how the Christian communion

has absorbed within itself a sacrament which is doubtin its
favor)
less far older
Among
the
first
it
than Christianity."^*
the heathen Cheremiss on the Volga,
bread from the new crop of wheat
is
when
to be
eaten, the villagers assemble in the house of the oldest
inhabitant,
The
open the eastward door and pray toward
sorcerer or priest then gives each a
mug
it.
of beer
and hands to every person a

"The whole ceremony," says the
to drain; next he cuts
morsel of bread.
10
Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 1910,
"Frazer,
Spirits,
12
/H^., II,
13 /îV., 49.
^Îbid., 51.
48.
I,
iSfiF.
I,
izo;
II,
590; IV, 23
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
28
writer
who
has described
cature of the eucharist."
^^
it,
"looks almost like a cari-
In fact
it is its
crude proto-
type.
The
Incas of Peru formerly ate bread and drank

liquor in a manner compared by the Spaniard to the
eucharist.^
The Aino
of Japan also regard their cereal offering
as an eaten god,"
and the East Indians, Buru, call their

sacramental meal "eating the soul of the rice.'"^ "In
all such cases," observes Frazer, "we may not improperly describe the eating of the new fruit as a sacrament
or communion with a deity, or at all events with a
powerful spirit." In many cases the rite was preceded
by the administration of a purgative or emetic, the idea
being to preserve the sacred food from contact with
profane nourishment.
Thus the Catholics take the
eucharist fasting. ^^
In some cases the sacrament of the first-fruits was

combined with a sacrifice or offering of them to the
gods or spirits, and at times the latter element of the
rite throws the earlier into the shade. ^
Here, too,
the analogy with the mass Is striking, as in the connection made by Paul between the feast and the unleavened bread, "Christ our passover sacrificed for us,"
and Christ the "first-fruits of them that slept.""
The custom of eating a god sacramentally was practiced by the Aztecs before the discovery of Mexico.
Twice a year. In May and December, an image of the
great god Vltzlllputzli was made of dough and then
15
Frazer, Spirits, I, 51.

16 Prescott,
Conquest of Peru,
17 Frazer, Spirits, II,
52.
^Îbid., 54.
^Îbid., 83.
^Îbid., 86.
21 1
Cor. V. 7
XV. 20.
Chap.
III.
broken
In pieces
Acosta says
and solemnly consumed.
that the Aztec virgins
made
29
the paste of beets and
maize, which they called the flesh and bones of Vltzlllputzll, and adored as such. Then, after a holocaust of
victims, the priests distributed the
The
ner of communion.
flesh and bones of God.
dough
after the
man-
people said that they ate the

similar mystic communion
upon which Frazer

remarks: "On the whole It would seem that neither the
ancient Hindoos nor the ancient Mexicans had much
was held by
Brahmans
the
from the most
to learn
In India,
refined mysteries of Catholic
theology.""
At
the festival of the winter solstice the Aztecs
first
killed their god Hultzllopochtli In efiigy and then ate

They made their Idol in the form of a man,
him.
from various seeds, with bones of acacia wood.
name and part of god Quetzalthrough and through,. which

Image
coatl pierced the
priest,
who took
the
Then
they cut out the heart,

which was given to the king, and divided the rest
among the people. The name of the festival was "god
As we shall see later on, at one time the
is eaten.'"^
was
called killing
it.
was baked
Christian host
in the
form of
man and
stabbed by the priest.
When
the Mexicans craved a closer union with the
endeavored to attain it by cannibalism

man impersonate their deity and then devour-
living god, they
making
ing him.^*
curious survival of
communion with
Image is found among the Huichol

Indians of Mexico, who have an Idol carved from lava,
eat.''
bits of which they scrape off with their nails and
god by eating
22
his
Frazer, Spirits,
23 Ibid., 90.
^*Ibid., 92.
2^ Spirits, II, 93-
II, 89.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
30
The Hindoos
also
found
furnish two further customs which are
in Christianity.
The Malas
eat a goddess
time of their marriage,^*' just as Cathobefore wedding.^" The Veddas of Cey-
in effigy at the
commune
make an offering
lics
lon
to the spirits of the dead, which

they eat sacramentally, believing that it will give them
health and good luck.
They even extend this inesti-
mable privilege to their dogs, hoping that the heavenly

food will make them better hunters. ^^ Even so at the
"palio," a horse-race held for centuries twice every
year at Siena, which
myself have witnessed,^ before
the race the horses and jockeys are taken into a church,
where the host
is
offered to the jockey to kiss and to
the horse to smell.
But not all our examples of god-eating are to be

found among "the beastly devices of the heathen."
"In Europe the Catholic Church has resorted to similar
means for enabling the pious
to ênjoy the
ineffable
God and
For this purpose images of the Madonna
are printed on some soluble and harmless substance
and sold in sheets like postage stamps. The worshiper
privilege of eating the persons of the Infant
Mother.
his
buys as
for,
many
of these sacred images as he has occasion
and, affixing one or
swallows the bolus
....
more of them
to his food,
In his youth Count Hoens-
broech and his devout mother used to consume portions

^^ spirits, II, 93.
27 Decree of Council
of Trent, C. Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte

des Papsttums und des romischen Katholizismus, 3d ed., 1911, 251.
28 C. G. Seligman, The Veddas, p.
130, quoted W. M. Groton, The
Christian Eucharist and the Pagan Cults, 1914, 8.
29 I saw the race, but not the consecration of the horses.
This was
witnessed by my sister, Dr. Winifred Smith, of Vassar College. So in
Spain, I am informed, bullfighters take the sacrament before they enter
the arena. As the danger of death is almost nil, it is probably conceived as a charm to strengthen them.
of
God and
tice
was
his
Mother with
their meals."
31
The
prac-
sanctioned by a decree of the Inqui-
officially
sition, in July, 1903.^

It is a fact of the highest importance that the sacra-
mental meal attained great prominence in many religions among the peoples of the Mediterranean during the centuries just preceding and just following the
Such meals were in many cases
rise of Christianity.
interpreted by a refined culture in a
way
less
gross
They were compared

than had been the case earlier.
in memory of the
funerals
given
at
banquets
with the
meals at Sparta
common
dead; they were likened to the
and elsewhere;^' they were communion with the god
simply in that he was the host and the worshippers his
Thus dinners of a purely social nature were
guests.
sometimes held in temples in order to enjoy the com-
pany of the
god.'^
But the fundamental
idea,
vaguely
expressed but always present, was the old one, that the
consecrated food was the means of obtaining obsession
by a good spirit, of becoming identified with the god of
the Mystery.^^
demons would
lest bad
body of the communi-
Caution had to be exercised

also enter the
So comparatively enlightened a philosopher as

Porphyry ^* assures us that demons delight in impure
cant.
meats and enter those who use them.

Fanatic Egypt saw nothing incongruous in treating
her gods like cattle from whose milk or flesh divinity
One of her Pharaohs achieved
could be extracted.
immortality by sucking the breast of a goddess;

30
^^
an-
Frazer, Spirits, II, 94. Mirbt, p. 400.

Gardner, Religious Experience of St. Paul, 1911, no.
^-Papyri Oxyr., I, no, edited by Milllgan, p. 97; cf. Carpenter,
Phases of Early Christianity, 251 ff.
33 K. Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 196.
3* Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, IV, 23.
31 P.
35 Dietrich,
loi.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
32
other took a more drastic method: "His servants," we

are told, "have captured the gods with a lasso, they
have found them and brought them down, have bound

them and cut their throats and taken out their entrails
and carved them and cooked them in hot cauldrons.
The king consumes their power and eats their souls.
The great gods are his breakfast, the middle-sized ones
his dinner and the small ones his supper.
The
king consumes all that comes to him.
Eagerly he
swallows all their magic power.
He becomes an heir
of might, greater than all heirs; he becomes lord of
heaven, for he ate all the crowns and bracelets; he ate
.
wisdom of every god," ^^

The blood of Osiris was a great charm, which,
poured in a cup of wine, made Isis drinking it feel love
for him in her heart."
When the blood could not be
procured, its place was taken by simple wine, consecrated by this hocus-pocus said seven times: "Thou art
the
wine and not wine but the head of Athene. Thou art
wine and not wine, but the bowels of Osiris." ^^
From
Persia marched forth Mithra to dispute the
empire of the world with Christ.

His warriors told
how the hero Saoshyaiit would kill a bull and of his fat,
mingled with the juice of the white haoma, would prepare a bevêrage assuring immortality to all who tasted
it.^
That the bull was a divine animal goes without
saying, for
how
otherwise could his flesh be the "drug
of immortality?"
ever,
was
The sacramental
also a love-feast, done in
3^ Dietrich,
37 Griffith,
banquet, how-
remembrance of the
icxj.
Demotic Magical Papyrus, p. 107. Reitzenstein, Die

und Paulus, 1910, 204.
Kenyon, Greek Papyri, 1, 105 Reitzenstein, 205.
hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen
38
39 Dietrich,
*o
As
102.
Ignatius called the eucharist
Ad
Ephesios, 20.
33
supper celebrated by the sun before his ascension/^

It
could only be partaken of after long initiation, and
was rightly regarded at Rome as "a magical meal." ^^
So similar was it to the Christian Supper that Justin

Martyr informs us it was directly imitated from the
by evil demons, who, "in the mysMithra, set forth bread and a cup of water
with certain explanations in the ceremonial of initiation." *^
Tertullian also noted the resemblance, so
dangerous for simple souls, between Mithraism and
institution of Christ
teries of
Christianity.**
Phrygian god who was born of a virgin,

and who died and rose again at Easter time, also left
his followers a sacramental meal.*^
His worshipper
could say:
"I have eaten from the drum, I have
drunk from the cymbal, I have carried the earthen
Attis, the
From
dish."
pictures
we know
that this latter
was
carried on the head in exactly the style in which, in the
Greek Church, the holy food of the eucharist was carAnother point of similarity
ried by the deacons.*
between the communions of Attis and Christ was the
u$e in each of
The
fish.*^
connection of
fish
with the eucharist,
made
as
early as the composition of the Gospel of Mark,* and
witnessed by inscriptions
*^ F.
catacombs,*
in the
Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 1903, pp. 158
XXX,
*2 Dietrich, 102.
Pliny, Hist. Nat.,
*3 Justin Martyr, First Apology, I, 66;
ity
*'^
103
M. Bruckner,
vols.,
^*
1909
An
6.
ff,
II,
227.
f.
"Attis,"
Die Religion
in
Geschichte und Gegenivart,
ff.
Mark vi. 38; Matt. xiv. 17;

eucharistic will be shown later.
4^
another
Clemen, Primitive Christian-
and its Non-Jeivish Sources, 1912, 261.

**Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 1905
*5 Frazer, Adonis, I, 272 ff, 309 f.
*8 Dietrich,
i,
is
ff.
Luke
ix.
13.
That
this
meal was
epitaph at Rome, dating 100-130, represents the eucharist by
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
34
case of the absorption by the conquering cult of the
One
elements of vanquished superstitions.

deed, explain
it,
In-
as has been done,'" by saying that
...
"Jesus found at Bethsaida

cult of the
cannot,
pagan
local
widely-spread fish-god, availed himself of
it,
and spiritualized it by means of an etymological coincidence between lehem, bread, luhm, fish, and luhm,
breath or spirit."
This is too uncritical of the documents, and assumes too much history in them.
But
of the connection there can be no doubt.
Dagon,
meaning "fish," was worshiped by the Philistines
(Judges xvi. 23), and Lucian tells us of fish kept in
sacred fountains from which they were ritually taken
and eaten. ^ The designation of Christ as 'Ix^v? was
not, as commonly stated, an anagram, but a genuine
case of syncretism.
He was called the Big Fish and
his
worshipers
little fishes.
Thus an
ancient Christian
inscription of Abercius says:
"Faith shows
way everywhere and
my
from
furnishes
me my
food: even a
fish
and pure, which a chaste virgin

captures."
An allusion to baptism is often seen in this,
though it much better suits the eucharist, or perhaps
the ancient custom of administering the eucharist imIn former centuries eating
mediately after baptism.
fish was symbolic of eating Christ's flesh, just as now
it is eaten by Catholics on fast-days, especially as a
preparation for communion.
a fountain, large
Rome,
of the
too, did not lack her sacramental meals.
titles
of Jupiter was "dapalis," "he of the feast,"
M. Goguel, L'Eucharistie des

Martyr, 1910, 279.
5*^ Eisler,
Transactions of Third International
loaves
and
ligions, II,
51
One
fishes.
352.
Reinach, C.
M.
R., Ill,
46
ff.
orig'ines
Congress
a Justin
of
Re-
and the
priest
who
"epulo," "feaster."
it is
35
presided at the sacrifice was called

^^
At
ancient Aricia, near
Rome,
believed that loaves were baked in the image of the
King of the Wood and eaten sacramentally/^

Something has been urged against the fact that the
students of comparative religion have found the eating
of a god in so many and diverse religions. Surely, it is
said, one key is too simple to fit so many locks; the
day of the vegetation god, killed and eaten and reviving, will go the way of the sun-god theory of Max
Miiller.
When one sees the vegetation myth in Aus-,
tralia and Mexico, in Orestes and Hamlet,'^* he must
be the victim of a monomania.
But it is certain that
many other religious ideas, whether true or delusive,
the existence of gods, immortality, the

craft,
have
until recently
semper, ubique
naturally in
ah omnibus.
et
god by eating him
similar one
cults, that,
all
power of
witch-
but universally:
Communion with
one of those ideas which arise

a certain stage of culture, and, under
is
just
myriad forms, survive
been held
is
in a
hundred
different societies.
baptism; the idea found
by washing, a
man
in
very
many
can cleanse his soul as
well as his body.
Greece we find the pre-Christian communion

forms.
After the great age of art and philosophy there was a reaction which Gilbert Murray
has called "The Failure of Nerve."
The hungry
generations trod men down as they had never done
before; there went up a great cry for respite from this
So
in
in
many
^2 Dietrich, 229.
53 Frazer, Spirits, II, 95.
5* Gilbert Murray, Hamlet
and
Orestes, 1914.
"One
of
my
friends
has assured me that every one knew it before; another has observed
that most learned men, sooner or later, go a little mad."
He refers
primarily to the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus.
CHRISTL\X THEOPHL\GY
36
To supply this need arose the

Myster\- Religions, of which Orphism is a good exam-
world, for salvation.
promising rest for the soul and union with God.

But they kept the old forms to a great extent, particuple,
and ritual of the god torn to pieces and

devoured by his adorers.
Traces of this belief are found in the ancient
Minoan ci\-ilization."' A god was there sacrificed in
larly the m\T:h
the
form of a
we know
bull, possibly at
in the
Greek legend we
mg
form of
some
a child.'"'
earlier period than
many an
In
see the original sacrifice
old
and devour-
So common were these motrcs

words to designate them:
(rraparYfto^ for the ritual tearing of the animal to pieces
and afxozKiyia for the feast of raw flesh. Thus Acteon
was a sacred stag worshiped at Plataeae and torn by
adorers who called themselves does '' Hippoh-tus was
a horse rent by horses '- Orpheus was a fox similarly
treated by "\-ixens," as, quite rightly no doubt, his
of a divine animal.
that
Greek has
special
devotees called themselves.'^

In Orpheus the early
church justly saw a prototype of Christ.^"'
It is interesting to note that the worshippers frequently, if not
always, called themselves by the name of the beast or
god they adored. Thus the followers of Bacchus were

called Bacchi and Bacchae:^- thus the worshippers of
Jesus "put on Christ."
became
oêoi
Xp'.crr.p
By
eating the eucharist they
just as did the votaries of
Dio-
nysus.^
^5
^
55=
Famell, Greece and Babylon,

Harrison, Prolegomena, 489.
Rdnach, C. M. R.. III. 24 ff.
IbU., 54
26.
On
the
omophagia
ff.
59/*i*f, II. 85
ff.
Harrison,
i Farnell.
ia general, 4.78
Prolegomena, 474; Reinach. C. M. R.

Culu, V, 150 ff.
'--Lake, Episilej of Paul, 214; Reinach, C.
M. K,
II.
II,
83
105.
ff.
Zeus himself was
At
of a bull.
summer
an ox was
pantomime/''
It
the feast
Aat?
Roman
became
mass
form
the
and restored
interesting to note that
a personified divinity,^^ just
midsummer, has presented the mysas an object to the adoration of the
At Delphi
people.
is
in
buphonia, near the
church, in instituting the feast of Corpus
Christi day, near
tery of the
Athens
killed, eaten
solstice,
to life in
as the
sacrificed at
this feast, called the
37
also a bull, called Hosiater, or the
Consecrator, and Isodaitos,
was immolated.
^^
these ceremonies
"He
of the equal feast,"
Plato doubtless had
when he
describes
^^
in
mind one of
the killing of a
and the drinking of his blood mingled

with wine.
This was accompanied by an oath to deal
justly, reminding us of the oath {sacramentum) that
bull in Atlantis,
Pliny says the Christians took at their sacred meal.^^
In the Eleuslnian mysteries animals were immolated
Demeter and their flesh eaten on the spot;** there

was also a meal of KiKti^v^ a mixture of grain and water,
but there is no evidence that this was regarded as repreto
senting the goddess.
But of
all
*^^
the "mysteries"
known
to us, that of Dio-
nysus bears the closest resemblance to that of Christ.
The god
of wine died a violent death and
to life again; his "passion," as the

his resurrection
cording to the
were enacted
common
Greeks called
in his
sacred
Harrison, Themis, i\i.
^Îbid., 146.
^^ Ibid.,
155.
^^ Ibid., 163; Plato, Critias, 119.

67 Pliny, ep.
96.
68 Foucart, Les
Mysteres
d'Eleusis, 1914, 375
69 Ibid.,
378
flP.
it,
rites.
and
Ac-
legend the son of Zeus and his
daughter Proserpina was given by jealous

^3
was brought
f.
Hera
to the
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
38
who
him to pieces, boiled his body and ate

His heart was taken back to Zeus and
Semele, from whom he was reborn. ^
As this doctrine
was spiritualized his resurrection was represented in a
different way and was followed by an ascension to
heaven.
Thus was inculcated the doctrine of imTitans,
it
tore
with herbs.
'^^
mortality; Plutarch consoles his wife for the death of

a
daughter by the belief
tradition
in a future life as
taught by
and revealed by the mysteries of Dionysus.
All this was enacted ritually in various parts of
As
Greece.
is
so often the case, the ritual preceded
the legend, which
stood custom,
totemic
was invented
sacramental eating of a
in this case the
bull,^^ or, in
some
to explain a misunder-
cases, of a kid," for the
inherited the ritual of both beasts.
brated at Delphi;^* and thus
Thus
in Crete.
god
it
was
cele-
In
all
cases
the animal was torn to pieces and a fragment of his

flesh
given to each worshipper and eaten raw as a sacra-
order to impart to each some of the divine

life." At first this was doubtless conceived of as a pure-
ment,
in
ly physical benefit,
but by the fourth century, B.C.,
the excellent moral effects of the initiatory feast are
Thus, in a fragment of Euripides's Cretans,

one speaks of "lengthening out a life of purity from
the day when I became an initiate of Idzean Zeus,
and a herdsman of night-roaming Zagreus [Dionysus],
At a later
a celebrant of the meal of raw flesh." ^^
stressed.
ôPrazer, Spirits, I, 12 ff; Reinach, C. M. R., II, 58 fF.

^^ Justin Martyr, First Apology,
54 Dialogue ivith Trypho,
;
"Reinach, C. M.
''Îbid., 96.
^^ Harrison,
^5
''^
R., II, 58
69.
ff.
Prolegomena, 440.
Frazer, Spirits, II, 16.

Quoted, Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, 1913, 257.
stage of Orphic theology,
39
was taken at
myth was changed
and communicant. Thus
some
offence
the idea of killing a god, and the
make
to
the deity the sacrificer
and eating his own

Last Supper and to
the mass. It was not always in the interests of humanity
to anthropomorphize the rite too much, for in Chios
and Tenedos Dionysus was represented by a human
victim who was subjected to the barbarous rite of holy
we
find a
flesh,"
god
sacrificed to himself,
a striking parallel to the
cannibalism.^
Now
seems to us such revolting savagery

hard to believe that it became imbeded in
a religion of great moral purity and lofty idealism.
Such, however, is the case. "The belief in the sacrifice
of Dionysus himself and the purification of man by his
blood," remained, according to Gilbert Murray, "a
curious relic of superstition firmly imbeded in Orphism, a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for
that reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred
mystery." ^^ But the rite continued; for the wild worshippers roamed in the woods and tore to pieces and
ate raw whatever animals they could cope with.
"It is
noteworthy, and throws much light on the spirit of
Orphism, that apart from this sacramental tasting of
blood, the Orphic worshipper held it an abomination to
that
it
all this
is
eat the flesh of animals at all
nated him just because
it
It
fasci-
was so incredibly primitive

was a mystery which trans-
and uncanny; because it

cended reason." Euripides has transmuted the beast''''
Frazer, Spirits,
78 Ibid.,
24.
79 Bacchae,
I,
23.
note on p. 85
^Îbid., p. 86.
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
40
ly rite into
He
immortal poetry.
rending of the animals:
thus describes the
^^
"Great uddered kine then hadst thou seen

Bellowing in sword-like hands that cleave and
A live steer riven in sunder, and the air
tear,
Tossed with rent ribs or limbs of cloven tread

And flesh upon the branches and a red
Rain from the deep green pines. Yea, bulls of pride,
Horns swift to rage, were fronted and aside

Flung stumbling by those multitudinous hands
Dragged
pitilessly."
And
through it all the maenads feel the divine presand adjure it, "O God, Beast, Mystery, come!"
It is Dionysus who is the god and the bull, to whom
Pentheus speaks, when he sees him, as follows ^^
ence,
Wild Bull this, that walks and waits

Before me? There are horns upon thy brow!
"Is
it
What art
The Bull
When
man
thou,
or beast?
For surely
now
on thee!"
is
new
was introduced into Italy, it

ran a course for a time something like that of Christhe
religion
In the
tianity later.
first
place
its
votaries were ac-
cused, like the Christians, of celebrating holy meals
followed by sexual debauches. ^^

pressed by the government.^*
Later they were sup-
That nothing might be
wanting to make the parallel with Christianity, the

word "sacrament," ^ originally a military oath, was
applied by the Romans to the initiation. Indeed it is
word had
certain that that

81
The Bacchae,
^~ Ibid., line
S3 Livy,
line
920
ff,
700;
the connotation of consecra-
ibid., p. 44.
p. 55.
XXXIX, 8, 5, quoted Reitzenstein, 88.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XV.
He says that the language of Tacitus in describing the introduction
and attempted suppression of the Christian worship, is almost similar
to that of Livy about the Bacchanalia.
s* E.
85
Livy,
XXXIX,
15, 13; Reitzenstein, 66.
tion long before the rise of the
Roman
church.
41
It
was
employed, or example, by Apuleius, for the visible sign"^ /

of the spiritual grace vouchsafed to the worshippers of
Isis.^*'
As men became
tutes
softer and
were found for the raw
more
fastidious, substi-
and blood which

were originally elements of their communion. Thus
the sacred Ivy, regarded as an impersonation of Dionysus was substituted for his flesh,*^ and wine for his
flesh
blood.*
The
connection of wine and blood was as familiar
to antiquity as
through the eucharist. It was

often an offering to the gods and a means of communion with them.*^ The blood was the life; who imbibed
it absorbed the spirit.
A Greek word for soul, <9v/aos,
it is
to us
etymologically fumus, the hot "steam" from blood.^"

The Romans sealed their oaths by drinking a mixture
is
of wine and blood called asseratum.^^ Among the Hebrews, too, wine was called the "blood of the grape." ^^
Offerings of bread and wine were made to Asklepios,
god of healing.^^
must be remembered that this tradition of the
eaten god was kept up by the mysteries among the lower strata of society only. In the world of art and letthe
It
ters best
known
to us there prevailed an enlightened
86
Apuleius, XI, 15, quoted ibid.

87 Plutarch,
Quaestiones Rom., 112; Clemen, 258; J. Rendel Harris,
"Origin of the Cult of Dionysus," Bulletin of J. Rylands Library,
1915,
p. 119 ff.
88 Justin
Martyr, First Apology, 54; Dialogue 'u;ith Trypho, 69.
89Kircher, Die sakrale Bedeutung des tVeines im Altertum,
1910,
45-
^Îbid., 78.
^'Îbid., 83.
^~ Ibid., 85.
They also treated wine as blood, pouring it out at the
base of altars. Robertson Smith, Religion
of the Semites, 1894, p. 230.
93 Kircher, 92 f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
42
skepticism.
Not many
wise,
not
many
noble,
were
called to salvation by the blood of Bacchus or of Attis.
The
expressed opinion of a
the Real Presence
is
very
Roman
philosopher as to
much what
the expressed
now: "When we call

corn Ceres and wine Bacchus," says Cicero,* "we use
opinion of a
modern
scientist is
a common figure of speech; but do you imagine that

anybody is so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds
on is god?" The answer then, as now, was in the affirmative.
9*D^ Natura deorum,
III, i6, 41.
Frazer, Spirits,
II, 167.
PAUL AND HIS SYMMYSTAE
IL
"The most
rowed
That they
ions.
^
was borfrom the older mystery relig-
excellent of the sacraments"
by the Christians
to their founder
attributed the institution of their rite
was
Many
inevitable.
of the classic
myths originated as explanations of ritual, in the desire

to show how Dionysus or Attis or Osiris had once done
what their initiates now re-enacted.^ The account of
the Last Supper is but an etiological cult story, analogous to the Greek myths or to the Hebrew fable of the
Passover in Exodus xii, designed to authorize a custom
"The
in the earliest community.^
Mark," says Loisy, "is like the gods of the
mysteries; what he does is the type of what happens to
The
his worshippers and what they must do
idea and form of this institution were suggested
by Paul, who conceived them in a vision, on
the model of the pagan mysteries." * In fact, as soon
as any institution was established, firmly or otherwise,
it was fathered on Christ, or at least on the apostles.
otherwise etablished
Christ of
So called by the Council of Trent, Mirbt, 226.

^Reinach, C. M. R., II, p. vi, says it is simply a matter of good
faith to apply to the Gospels the same process which has been generally acknowledged as the correct solution of the classic myths.
Some
Christians now admit the likeness of the eucharist and the earlier
theophagy. See Catholic Encydopadia, and E. A. James, Primitive
1
Belief
3
and
Ritual, 1917.
So called by Heitmiiller, R. G. G.,
I,
25,
though
illogically
he
extract some history from the epoj \670j. Long arguments

against his position and that of Reitzenstein and Dietrich in Schweitztries to
er,
Paulinische Forschung, 152 ff, and by G. P. von Wetter in Z. N. T.

1913, pp. 202 ff.
4 Loisy, L'evangile selon Marc, 1912,
405.
JV.,
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
44
Thus
the mingling of water with wine was said by

Cyprian to have begun by Jesus ^ thus the self-communion of priests was wrongly said to have descended
"as it were from apostolic tradition." ^ On the way
;
the Gnostics attributed
all
their peculiar institutions
and instructive essay has been written

by C. Schmidt/
But though we see nothing historic in the Last Supper, and are convinced that Paul founded the eucharist,
it is worth while asking what analogous conceptions,
to Jesus a long
any, prevailed in the pre-Pauline
if
the sacramental use of food.
We
community about
shall find that there
are two such conceptions plainly discernible; the
first
that of the Messianic feast, the second that of spiritual
nourishment. Both these are founded in the Old Testament.

There, though sacrifice is a covenant with
Yaweh, and a communion meal, there is no trace of the
eating of a divine animal.^ The Jews of the historic
period had gone beyond this conception, just as had
the "Olympian" religion of the lonlans, represented by
Homer. But
the idea that
when
the Messiah
came he
many
should eat and drink with his
elect, is
places in the Jewish writings,^
and doubtless consider-
ably influenced the Christian supper.
found
It is
in
represented
document known as "Q" by the marriage feast

of the king's son.^" It is also prominent in the Apocalypse," though neither it nor Q nor the Jewish-Chrisin the
Quoted
in Catechism of Council of Trent.

Council of Trent, Mirbt, 228.
^ Texte und
Untersuchungen, VIII.
8 H. P. Smith, The Religion
of Israel, 1914, pp. 39 f.
9 Isaiah Iv. iff; Ixv. 12 ff; xxv. 68; Enoch, xxiv and xxv; Test.
Levi, xxiii. 11 and Ixii. 14. Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus,
5
^
1910.
^
11
Matt. xxii. 1-14; Luke xiv. 15-24.

Apoc. ii. 7, 17; iii. 21; vii. 16 f; xix.

tian epistles of
45
James or Jude or 2 Peter, know anyThus also Luke makes Jesus
thing of the eucharist/-
say to his disciples
"And
assign unto you, as
father has assigned unto me, a kingdom, that ye
my
may
kingdom." "
The other idea which amalgamated naturally with
the eucharist was that of a spiritual nourishment. "Man
cannot live by bread alone," says the Deuteronomist,
"but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God." ^* The manna was to the Psalmist "bread
from heaven." ^^ Isaiah offered bread and wine and
milk of a spiritual nature without money and without
"Those who eat me," says Wisdom in Ecclesiprice.
asticus," "will always hunger for me; those who drink
and drink
eat
at
my
table in
my
^"^
always thirst for me again." Philo, too, spoke

of the Logos as the bread from heaven. ^^ Nor do I
doubt that this is the meaning of the fourth petition
in the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our supernat-
me
will
ural
spiritual]
e.,
[i.
bread."
The Greek word
translated in the Latin versions stipersubstanfollowed by Wyclif with "bread above other
eTTtowto? is
tialis,'^
12 The idea that Apoc. ii. 17 refers to the eucharist is untenable.

Hibbert, XI, 140 ff. Q has nothing even on the Passion. Harnack,
Sayings of Jesus, 1908, 233. W. Haupt, Worte Jesu und GemeindeUeberlieferung, 191 3.
13 Luke xxii. 30.
It is uncertain whether the original was in Q.
Probably not, as Matt, lacks the verse, and the word diaridefiat is
eucharistic.
1*
Deut.
15
Psalm
Ixxviii. 24
1^
Isaiah
Iv.
viii.
I'^XXIV,
trine of the
18
29.
3.
f.
i f.
Many
other references in Stone, History of the Doc-
Holy Eucharist, 1909,
Quoted Pfleiderer, IV, 23
i.
3.
ff.
19 In Matt. vi. 11.

The translation of the same word in Luke xi. 3
quotidianus, and this form is adopted in the ritual. Most modern
versions follow this second rendering, "daily," which is also supported
by F. S. Chase, The Lord's Prayer, 1891; F. Blass, Grammatik des
neutestamentlichen Griechisch, fourth edition, 1913, 123; Dobschiitz,
Harvard Theological Revieiv, 1914, p. 313.
is
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
46
substance" and the Doual Bible with "supersubstantial
bread."
One
Museum
reads
hodie."
ancient Latin manuscript in the British
"Panem verbum Dei
evidently a gloss, but a
celestem da nobis
good
one.
so simple an idea as "daily" the author of
word
tainly not choose a
so rare that
elsewhere, was absolutely
unknown
it is
To
express
Q would cernot met with
to the learned Ori-
gen " and puzzled early evangelists." Moreover "daily" would be tautological, having just been said.^^ Further, the petition for bread would contradict the injunction given a little later, to take no thought for what to
eat or to drink, but to seek first the kingdom. All the
other petitions
in this early
spiritual blessings,
Christian prayer are for
and the intrusion of the mere bodily
needs would be strange.
Etymologically the word
is
compared by Liddell and Scott to fTnêravo's, but it seems

better to derive it from ini meaning "super" and oiaU
meaning "substance," and to compare it with cTroupavtos,
"superheavenly," in other New Testament writings.
The
God
idea of spiritual nourishment offered directly by
to the believer
writings and in
is
also developed in the Johannine
what was one of
their principal sources,
Odes of Solomon. Written probably by a Disciple

of the Baptist at Ephesus very near the middle of the
first century,^* one of these poems (XIX, i ff) says:
"A cup of milk was offered to me and I drank it in the
sweetness of the delight of the Lord. The Son is the
the
^'^
E. S. Buchanan, iiriovaios, Expositor, 191J., p. 423.
De oratione, XXVII, 7.
22 The Gospel of
the Hebrews rendered "to-morrow's bread." The
Acts of Thomas (Pick, Apocryphal Acts, 1909, 144) omitted this peti21
tion
I,
altogether.
Cf.
Cyril's
Catechetical Lectures,
91.
23 Matt. vi.
25 ; Luke xii. 22.
24 Preserved Smith, "The
quoted by Stone,
Disciples of John and the
mon," Monist, 1915, pp. 161-190.
Odes of
Solo-
47
and he who was milked is the Father and she who

milked him is the Holy Spirit." " Elsewhere in these
poems, which nowhere have any allusion to the eucharist,^ milk and honey are spoken of as the mystic food
cup,
of believers. ^^
It
interesting to note in this connec-
is
and honey were added to the first communion in the Monophysite churches of Armenia.''*
This would seem to indicate that feeding with milk
was actually done as symbolic of the new and spiritual
Sallustius'' speaks of "feeding on
birth of the child.
tion that milk
milk as though
we were being born
again," in the
rit-
Perhaps the same thought lies back of

ual of Attis.
But it
Paul's simile "milk for babes" (i Cor. vi. 5).
is
plainest in the First Epistle of Peter, so called, in
^ "As
the words translated in our Revised Version
is
which
newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk
:
without guile." The Authorized Version in this case

came nearer to. the true meaning when it rendered
XoyLKov aSoXov ydXa "sincere milk of the word," provided
only we write Word with a capital, and understand it
of the Logos.
But neither the
Logos
tain,
celestial
bread nor the milk of the
constituted a ritual meal.
however, that the
first
It
is
practically cer-
Christian community had
such prior to the institution of the eucharist by Paul."

25
Reading of
Studies,
Burkitt's
manuscript of the Odes, Journal of
T/i.
912.
^^Monisi, i86.
27
and Psalms of Solomon, second ediJ. Rendel Harris, T/ie Odes
tion, 191 1, p. 80.
28 Conybeare, "Eucharist" in Encyclopedia Britannica.
29 "On the Gods," translated by G. Murray, Greek Religion, p. 193.
^0
Peter
ii.
2.
on similar thoughts
31
1912,
this Reitzenstein, Mysterienreligionen, 156, and

Egyptian religions, ibid., 157.
Christentum in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten,
On
in
Achelis, Das
I, 172-83; II, 78
fl;
Carpenter, 251
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
48
Precedent for such could be found
in Jewish custom,^^
and among the Essenes^^ and probably also in the custom of the Disciples of John.^* This meal was known
as the "love-feast," and persisted in certain quarters
side by side with the eucharist for many years.
It is
alluded to by Jude^^ and described by TertuUian.^*'
Whether any traces of it can be found in the Gospels
or
in Acts,
colored as these are by Pauline theology,
more than doubtful.

If we read the books of
is
New Testament in the

which they were written, the first account of
the eucharist is found in i Corinthians, written from
Ephesus at about Easter time, probably in the year
There Paul speaks of its institution in words
^^.
(xi. 23 ff) which, to bring out their literal meaning,
order
the
in
I translate into
awkward English: "For /

Lord that which also I delivhow that the Lord Jesus in the night
ufiavoidably
received over from the
ered over to you,
which he was delivered over, took bread, and having

it, broke and said: This is my body which is
for you. This do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup after supper, saying. This cup is the
new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as ye
drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye
eat this bread and drink this cup, ye proclaim the
Lord's death till he come. So that whoever eats the
bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is
guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a
in
blessed
32Josephus, Ant., XIV, 10, 8; S. J. Case,

Christianity, 1914, p. 340.
33
R. G. G.
3*
The Mandaeans
I.,
The Evolution
of Early
38.
or Sabaeans, the spiritual descendants of the

Disciples of the Baptists, had a supper consisting of "bites and water."
M.
Bruckner, Der sterbende und auferstehende Gotheiland, 1908,

Jude, 12.
Tertullian, Apology, cap. 39.
35
36
p. 47.

man
49
and thus eat of the bread and drink

eats and drinks not discerning the
body is eating and drinking judgment to himself. For
this cause many among you are weak and sickly and not
a few sleep."
try himself
of the cup. For
It
is
an
who
dogma
official
of the Catholic Church that
these
words should be taken
olics,
less subjective
as history."
The Caththan the Protestants, admit that
Paul received a special revelation on the subject, only

they say that
happened.^^
it
revealed to him exactly what really
Modern
intrinsic absurdity
Protestant scholars have
felt
the
of this and have argued that Paul
could not have received a special revelation on this
would not be in accordance with "the

acknowledged principles of economy in the use of miracles," for Paul to receive by revelation what might
have been learned by other means.^^ This old-fashioned point of view will have less weight with impartial scholars than the other argument advanced, that
Paul uses the words "received" and "delivered" in
his account of the death and resurrection of Jesus,
which, it is commonly believed, he learned from the
other apostles. But reasons have been put forward to
show that here, too, Paul is really giving the results
of his own subjective visions.^"
These very words,
"received" and "delivered," were used in the Pirke
point, because
37 Syllabus of
it
Pius X, 1907, Mirbt, p. 409.

38Renz, Geschichte des Messopfer-Begriffs, 2 vols., 1901 f, I, 122.
39 Lambert, The Sacraments in the Neiv Testament, 1903.
*o Preserved Smith, "A New Light on Peter and Paul," Hibbert,
July, 1913. The conclusions here advanced have been accepted by
Solomon Reinach who translated the article in French and published
it in the Bibliothegue de propagande, Oct. 15, 191 3.
I do not deny the
historicity of Jesus, nor the fact of his death upon the cross; but I
contend that the specific accounts of the passion and resurrection
found in the Gospels emanated from Paul.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
50
Aboth,
i.
hovah on
of what Moses received directly from Jeand delivered to elders.*^ They were
I,
Sinai
also technical terms of the
pagan mysteries/^
If
we
Paul himself we shall learn whence

he got his doctrine: "The gospel which was preached
by me Is not after man. For neither did I receive it
from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me
through revelation of Jesus Christ
When
will only listen to
...
was the good pleasure of God

to reveal
his Son in me,
immediately I conferred not
with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem
to them which were apostles before me: but I went
up Into Arabia: and again I returned unto Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit
Cephas and tarried with him fifteen days." *^ Later,
Paul was kind enough to instruct these Jewish apostles
in the gospel he had received, though he dared not to
do it publicly.** How he obtained these revelations in
it
Paradise he
tells
As he
elsewhere. *
"received" the
story of Christ's death and resurrection thus,* he

perfectly consistent in
my
according to
"God's wisdom
asserting
gospel."
in a
mystery,"
"He who was
was Christ:
justified In the spirit, seen
the nations.
*^
*^
"Christ was raised
The whole
*^
was
and
thing was
mystery
this
manifested
In
itself
the flesh,
of angels, preached
among
*^
.
*2
Weiss, in Arch'tv
Clemen, 233.
43
Galatians,
J.
i.
fiir
Religionsivissenschajt, 1913.
flF.
^Îbid., ii. 2.
*5 2 Cor. xii. 2 ft.
*^ 1 Cor. XV. 4.
^"^
Tim.
ii.
8.
though the whole

48
Cor.
49
Tim.
ii.
iii.
The
pericope, according to
many
scholars, is Paul's,
epistle is not.
7.
i6.
The
primitive Christian idea.
letter is not
by Paul, but well expresses the

The German Wrede has
by
at last writing a
how
51
put us under a great debt
biography of the Tarsian,^" show-
was possible psychologically for Paul

to evolve these myths and possible historically for him
to foist them on the Christian church.
But this is not
the place to discuss the whole extent of Paul's mything both
ology;
all
it
that here concerns us
is
his derivation of the
dependence
It has been
on the Mysteries cannot be denied. ^^
proved from linguistic evidence, proved to the hilt,
that Paul was saturated in the current conceptions of
the Mystery Religions, ^^ prominent among which was
that of the eaten body of the Saviour God, who, in
human form, should live, suffer violent death and rise
again.
He himself speaks of "the table of demons,"
i. e., of false gods, and of "communion with demons"
as analogous to the communion with Jesus ( i Cor. x
Moreover, in this particular case the evidence
21).
of his derivation of his doctrine from a vision is peculiarly strong.
Hardly any scholar, not under the
eucharist.
priori, the possibility of his
double dogmatic prepossession of the historicity of the

Last Supper and the improbability of revelations, has
denied
it.
Among
a vast
number who have admitted
the vision are Chrysostom, Osiander,

ner,^^
Conybeare
^*
Calvin, Gard-
and Reitzensteln.^^
Paul, English translation by J. E. Carpenter, 1908. According

to Schweitzer the book belongs "not to theology but to world-litera^^
ture."
51
Heitmiiller in R. G. G., "Abendmahl."

Mysterienreligionen und Paulus, passim. Augustine:
Contra Faustum, xx. 20; Keating, 2.
53 Gardner, Explorat'to E'vangelica, second edition, p.
453, gives
references for the older scholars.
He here withdraws his former
theory that Paul derived the Supper from the Eleusinian Mysteries,
but says that Paul was influenced by mystery concepts in general.
52 Reitzenstein,
^^
Myth, Magic and Morals, 251
55
Mysterienreligionen, 50
f.
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
52
In fact the force of the language is overwhelming.

The emphatic "I," the positive statement that the
was received "from the Lord," ought to be

But this is not all. Note that Paul uses the
doctrine
decisive.
same word for that which he "delivered over" to the

Corinthians, and that which was done on the night in
which the Lord was "delivered over." Prof. W. B.
this could not mean "becommonly rendered, but must mean
Smith has pointed out that

trayed," as
it
Is
"delivered up" or "surrendered."
This explanation
^^
now been adopted by Messrs. A. Robertson and

A. Plummer, in their Commentary on i Corinthians.^^
They state that the words in question refer "perhaps
has
chiefly to the Father's
Son's self-sacrifice
may
surrender of the Son, and the

Better, pos-
also be included."
say that Jesus was himself, as a mystic concept, delivered over to Paul and by him so delivered
sibly, to
over to his neophytes.
One more
to
point requires exegesis before
we proceed
the consideration of Paul's eucharlst doctrine in
The words "new covenant," here used first

of the cup, were probably borrowed by Paul from the
Jewish Messianic sect of the Zadokites,^^ who made a
"new covenant" at Damascus, shortly before Paul's
general.
The Greek word
sojourn there.
means "testament," and

epistle to the
of the
^^
is
Hebrews.'^
Hebrew
berith,
hiaO^K-rj
But
as
it
59
is
and was used
Ecce Deus, English edition, 1912, pp. 303
1911.
^"'International Critical Commentary, p. 243.
58 Fragments of a Zadokite Vôrd, Apocrypha
H. Charles, II, 792.

Hebrews, ix. 15
ed. R.
fiF.
commonly
so used by the author of the
the equivalent
to translate this
ff.
German
edition,
and Pseudepiffrapha,

word
in
the Septuagint,*'" "covenant"
tainly the true
meaning of the word
What is Paul's
my body?" It
is
S3
almost cer-
here.^^
understanding of the words "This
them litermeum^^ which has been decisive for the Catholic church, and which, Luther
declared, was "too strong" for him, meant exactly
what it said. The reason why many Protestants have
is
ally.
The
certain that he took
is
"/loc est corpus
maintained the contrary
is
impossible themselves.
Of
simply that they believed

course
it
is
impossible
it
mean that Paul did not believe it.

Kirsopp Lake puts the point aptly: "Much of the controversy between Catholic and Protestant theologians
has found its center in the doctrine of the eucharist,
but that does not
and the
latter
have appealed to primitive Christianity

From their point of view the
to support their views.
appeal
fails; the
Catholic doctrine
is
much more
nearly
primitive than the Protestant.
But the Catholic advocase has proved still more: the
cate in winning his
doctrine which he defends

pre-Christian."
*^^
that the Catholic
And
is
is
again
not only primitive but

"It
much nearer
than the Protestant."
is
necessary to
insist
to early Christianity
^^
The part of the text stressed by those who wish

make the rite merely commemorative is, "Do this
remembrance of me."
to
in
Let us hear an expert on the

subject: "Frankly," says Reitzenstein,^* "I can never
interpret these words of a mere commemorative meal,
The whole
such as the Greek cult of the dead knows.
ô E.
g., Job xxxi. I.
^1 Dibelius, Das Abendmahl, 1911, 76 ff.
62 Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 215.
62
^*
H. T. R., 1914, p. 429.

Mysterienreligionen, 51.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
54
sacramental teaching which Paul adds immediately,

contradicts
that
interpretation.
The words can
be
better understood in a mystical sense analogous to that
of an approximately contemporary narrative

text in
drink
which Osiris gives
in a
cup of wine,
in
Isis
and Horus
order that they
his
magic
blood to
may
not for-
in a
get his death, but must seek
him in yearning plaint,

until he again becomes alive and unites with them."
This then explains also the words "ye proclaim the
Lord's death till he come."
If the eucharist be regarded as analogous to the meals held in memory of
dead friends by the Greeks, it must be recognized that
these meals, also, were sacrificial."^
In the same sense must be read the words that he
who eats and drinks unworthily, not discerning the
body, eats and drinks judgment (or "damnation") to
himself.
The meaning is so clear that Mr. Scott is
able to say that practically all commentators agree that
the phrase refers to the failure on the part of the worshipper to see that the bread represented the body of
Christ.""
"Behind these words," says Bousset quite
rightly,
"we
catch glimpses of definitely sacramental
marvelous virtue of sacred

How perfectly crude were
magical effect is brought out in
feeling, the belief in the
food, for weal or woe."

Paul's ideas of this
"^
verse 30, where he attributes the prevalence of sickness
and death among his converts to the misuse of the

But the benefits of the Christian mysteries
did not go the length of guaranteeing salvation irre-
holy food.
spective of conduct.
^5
Paul devotes the best part of a
Lake, Earlier Epistles, 214.

Expositor, August, 1915, 182 ff. He himself, however, proposes
that the body here means "fellowship," and "failing to discern it"
means being unbrotherly.
^^ Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, 1906 f, ed.
J. Weiss, ad loc.
^^
S5
chapter to the confutation of his belief which had

evidently gained currency among the Corinthians.
Indeed some of them turned their eucharists into
drunken
orgies. ^'^
disorders
among them
Whether
^^
cannot be determined.
the
abominable
sexual
originated In these debauches,
Somewhat
later the accusations
were made against the Christians that they united

"Thyestean banquets and Oedipean intercourse" at
their meetings. ^^
Almost all that Paul says implies his belief that

bread and wine were body and blood of Christ. Thus
"The cup of blessing which we bless,

not a sharing of the blood of Christ? The bread
(i Cor. X. i6)
is it
which we break,
Christ?"
"
If
is
it
not a sharing of the body of
we ask how he conceived
this,
the
answer must be that he never raised the question of

mode, but that he appears to have assumed the reality
of his contention with a literalness far surpassing that
of the Fourth Lateran Council.
In classical antiquity
symbol and reality were not separated as we separate

them." To Greek philosophy words were things, and
that was Its greatest weakness.
So the personification
of bread, wine, war and love as Ceres, Bacchus,
and Venus seems
Mars
mere figure of speech, but to

the ancients implied a good deal more.
Even so a
child will now say of her doll "This is my baby," and
68 I
6^ I
Cor.
Cor.
70 I Cor.
'^^
R. G.
72 Lake's
to us
x; Lake, Earlier Epistles, 200 and 213.

xi. 21.
V.
I, 633.
"Nachapostolisches Zeitalter" by
translation.
G.,
Knopf.
73Bergh van Eysinga, Radical Vieius about the Neiv Testament,

Ramsay in Expository Times, XXI, 516. Harnack makes
1912, 104.
the same remark. "At that time 'symbol' denoted a thing which, in
some way, really is what it signifies." Dogma, Eng., II, 144. Cf. also
IV, 289, n. 2, and Loofs in Realencyclopddie fiir protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3d ed., I, 58.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
56
you
it is not her baby, but only the symbol

of one, will not be convinced, and will even begin to
cry if you press the point.
So to the primitive Chris-
if
insist that
tian the breed and wine simply were the body and
blood of his Savior; words could not make it plainer
to him than that.
They just were.
This belief of Paul implies the other one held by the
Catholic Church that the eucharist
never states
is
a sacrifice.
He
with equal clearness, but he assumes

it.
Indeed it could hardly be otherwise. It is probable a priori because it was so in the mystery religions
he knew.
It is probably a posteriori because it can be
this
proved that other Christians of the

Clement of Rome, so regarded it.
first
century,
e. g.,
But it is not entirely a matter of inference.

Conybeare correctly
points out that the germ of the idea, at least, is found
in the words, "body, which is for you,'^ and (in the
Gospels), "blood, poured out for you.''''* Paul
also speaks in one breath of "keeping the feast" and
of "Christ our passover that hath been sacrificed for
us." "
Thus, further, he compares the holy bread
with the sacrifices of Israel, which gave the Jews "communion with the altar," ^^ and with the things which
the heathen sacrificed to devils: "Ye cannot," says he,
"partake of the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils;
Lord and the

In this verse, which incidentally
ye cannot partake of the table of the

table of devils."
"
was familiar with

pagan mysteries, the Cath-
furnishes invaluable proof that Paul
the sacrificial meals of the

olics rightly see a clear
7*
'^5
76
support to their doctrine of the
Conybeare, "Eucharist," E. B.
1
I
77 I
V, 544-
Cor. V. 7.
Cor. X. 17
Cor. X.' 21.
f.
Srawley, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,

The
of the mass.^^
sacrifice
idea here
is
57
same
the
as
that expressed in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions,
who worships pagan
gods, or tastes meat sacthem has communion with demons.

Further the words "This do in remembrance of me" had
the connotation in both Greek and Latin (TroiciTe,
that he
'^'^
rificed to
facite) of
Indeed
"doing
it
was
sacrifice."
inevitable that the
be regarded as the counterpart of

ish
And
and pagan. ^
communions should
sacrifices,
both Jew-
the later developments of
in
both religions, Paul would find prepared for him the

idea of "spiritual and bloodless sacrifices," a phrase
soon borrowed to denote the eucharist. According to
the Testament of the
Twelve Patriarchs
offer such sacrifices to God.^^
ature the same phrase AoytK^

ing brought by
Tat
the angels
In the Hermetic
dvcria is
to his father
liter-
applied to the offer-
The
Hermes. ^^
vic-
tim here thought of was the Logos, ^* just as in similar
words about
Isis the
And this
herself.^
was
was represented by the body
victim offered to the goddess

victim
of the worshipper, a comparison also

describing the Bacchanalia.^*'
inate Paul's injunction to the
God
sent their bodies to

allusion
is
made by Livy
in
All this serves to illum-
Romans
(xii.
to pre-
i )
as a spiritual sacrifice.
not directly to the eucharist but
is
The
from
circle of ideas closely analogous to that of the sacrifice

''^
Council of Trent, Mirbt, 242.
'^^
II,
Kennedy, 273.
71.
Conybeare in E. B., "Eucharist." Renz, I, 152. Cajetan, quoted
below; Stone I, 9. The same double meaning is in Hebrew ntJ'y.
81 Conybeare,
Myths, Morals and Magic, 252.
80
82 Test.
^^
35.
Levi, III,
6.
Corpus Hermeticum, XIII. 18; Reitzenstein, Mysterienreligionen,
88.
84 Ibid.
^^ Ibid., p.
86 Livy,
91.
XXXIX,
10, 7
Reitzenstein, p. 88.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
58
of the communion.
Peter
ii.
It Is
expressed more clearly in
5.
Other passages in the Pauline epistles " doubtless

have the eucharistic doctrine as a background, but they
are too vague, apart from one in Colossians, to be discussed presently, to be of importance for our present
purpose.
It will
be objected that
new and pagan
rite
if
Paul really introduced a

it would have
into Christianity,
been withstood violently by the Jewish Christians and

especially by the previous apostles.^
To this the
answer is that he really was so opposed and on this
very point.
Since F. C. Baur,^^ few church historians

have realized the tremendous strain that existed between the Jerusalem community and the Apostle of the
Gentiles.
It became so virulent that when Mark wrote
his gospel, entirely
along Pauline
lines,^
he could find
scarcely anything to say about Peter save that he
had
denied his
Lord and
When, on
the other hand, the Jewish faction expressed
was
that Christ
had
called
him
Satan.^^
brand Paul as "a false apostle and a

liar,"
and, "Balaam, who taught the children of
Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit
itself, it
to
xii. 13; Galatians iii. 6-26; Romans iv. 25 to v. 9 ; Eph.

these see B. W. Bacon in Harvard Theological Revieiv, 1915,
505 ff. He finds not only the Pauline epistles but the Gospels "polarized" about the two sacraments of baptism and the supper.
8'^
ii.
Cor.
On
*8
Schweitzer, Paulinische Forschung, Einleitung.

Paul, English translation, 1876, Introduction and Part I, passim.
On this, Schweitzer, Paulinische Forschung, 10 and 194. Cf. further,
Hibbert, 1913, 737 ff.
9*> On
Mark's Paulinism, Loisy, Les evangiles synoptiques, I, 25,
116; B. W. Bacon, The Beginnings of the Gospel Story, 1909, pp.
XXV ff. Harnack, Sayings of Jesus, 248. The theory, originating with
Papias, that Mark represents Peter, has been exploded.
81 Mark viii. 31-34; xiv. 66-72.
2 Apocalypse ii. 2
the allusion to Paul has been recognized by
^^
Renan and many
others.
Not only the Jews but the disciples of

Ephesus and Damascus anathematized him as
fornication."
John
at
59
^^
the perverter of their law, "the
man
of scoffing."
^*
the great schism in the early church does not

occupy a still more important place in the New Testament is due partly to the fact that Peter and Paul ap-
That
parently divided the
field into
two spheres of
the Jerusalem apostles agreeing,
influence,
for the sake of a
Paul to preach what he wished to the

is also due in part to the complete
tribute, to allow
Gentiles.^^
It
triumph, after the destruction of Jerusalem, of the

Pauline faction and to the desire of irenic historians
smooth everything over and make all appear according to Paul's gospel from the beginning.^^
As to the eucharist, though there was opposition, its
adoption was made easier to the Jewish Christians by
the fact that they already had a common meal with
which it was soon identified. This "love-feast," as we
know from Jude, Tertullian, and other sources, conlike
Luke
to
tinued to the second century at least."
of opinion
among
scholars as to
The
whether
it
difference
was
identi-
with or different from the eucharist, is doubtless

due to the fact that the two, at first distinct, were gradIt is noteworthy that the purely Jewish
ually merged.
Christian literature, so far as it has survived in the
cal
New
namely Q, James, Jude, 2 Peter,

Testament
says nothing of the great rite
and the Apocalypse
Nor
and this is very signiof the Gentile Church.
^^ Apocalypse ii. 14.

The reference is to the doctrine of
Spiritual fornication, or idolatry, is meant.
^* In the recently discovered Fragments of a Zadokite
G. Margoliouth in Expositor, Dec. 1911 and March 1912.
^5
Galatians
ii.
bert, 1913, pp. 748

^^ Hibbert, -j^-j.
9^
7.
Conybeare, Myth, Magic and Morals,
fl.
Harnack, Luke the Physician, 158

Conybeare, "Agape'' in Encyclopedia Brit.
f.
Cor. x.
Work,
11.
cf.
Hib-
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
6o
^
does
earliest
Roman
ficant
the Shepherd of
Hermas, one of the
Christian writings.
Little later the
Didache,^^ in giving an account of the eucharist, carefully refrains from speaking of the Last Supper, of
body or blood or of the sacrifice of the cross. Instead of the words of institution, it recommends a
simple prayer connecting the cup with the "vine of
the
David."
somewhat stronger opposition is probably seen in

the Epistle to the Hebrews.
O. Holtzmann has recently pointed out in this book a polemic against the
Other scholars "' have seen reference to
still others ^^^ have
denied that there are any references at all.
The
verses which Holtzmann relies on are xiii. 9 f "Be not
carried away by diverse and strange teachings: for it
is good that the heart be stablished by grace, not by
foods wherein they that occupied themselves were not
profited.
We have an altar of which they have no
right to eat which serve the tabernacle."
This seems
to agree well with the interpretation of Holtzmann,
and it is on the whole supported by other verses in the
epistle.
Thus in vi. 2, the writer speaks of baptism
and laying on of hands but omits the eucharist. More
striking is ix. 9 "gifts and sacrifices which cannot, as
touching the conscience, make the worshiper perfect,
being only, with meats and drinks and divers washeucharist.'
the eucharist without polemic, and
ings, carnal ordinances."
The
to the old dispensation, but
through
reference
it
is,
of course,
the author seems
^^ Reville,
^9
Revue de I'histoire des religions, LVI, 26.

IX, 10; Gardner, Exploratio Evan., 458; Religious Experience of
Paul, 119,
etc.
^"0 Z. N. T. fV., 1909, 251-60,

101 Srawley, E. R. E., V.
543.
102
Lambert, 391.
against him, Goguel, 219.

to hit at the
new ceremonialism.
6i
Again, the insistence
12 that Jesus was sacrificed once only for our sins
in X,
seems to read almost like a Protestant polemic against

the repeated sacrifice of the mass.
The Paulinists also
seem to be scored in the verse against those who have
counted the blood of the covenant a common thing
(xii. 29).
The verse "forget not to do good and to
communicate," refers, naturally, not to communion but
to giving to the poor, as in Romans xv. 26, 2 Cor.
ix.
13.
One
other passage
in
Paul has been
left for discus-
sion until now, because it seems to refer to those who

opposed his eucharist doctrine. I mean Col. ii. 16 f:
"Let no man therefore judge you in food or in drink,
or in respect to a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: which are but a shadow of things to come;
but the body is Christ's."
The Synoptic gospels adopt the Pauline view entire.
I
will spare
my
reader the exhibition of the texts
lating to the Last
Supper
in parallel
re-
columns, and the
long comparison of them, with the purpose of discovering what
attempts
is
tives.
historic or original in them.
have
Mark and
there
is
definitely
those
who
Those who favor
prefer Luke,^*'^ cannot show that
anything but Paul
The words
failed.
All such
in the lesson
of the narra-
attributed to Jesus, are, says Loisy,
"the doctrine of Paul and are simply incomprehensible as addressed

his death." "*
I
at
by Jesus to
Mark
his disciples
Corinthians, for the usage
Rome when
103
10*
As
he wrote.
had become established
His omission of the Pauline
and Bacon, H. T.
L'evangile selon Marc, 403.
Heitrauller,
on the day of
did not need to copy them from
R., V, 322 S.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
62
words "Do
remembrance of me" has no signifiseemed to Mark implied, or, as Germans would say, selbstverstdndlich. Schweitzer and
others have seen in the verse added by Mark, in which
Jesus says that he will no more drink of the fruit of the
vine until he shall drink it new in the kingdom of God,
this in
cance, for they
a genuine reminiscence.
for the idea here
of
Cor,
xi.
There are
charist in
is
This, however,
is
untenable;
also Pauline, closely similar to that
26.
at least three other allusions to the eu-
Mark
besides the account of
its institution.
The first of these of which I shall speak is positive

proof that words about the sacrament could be attributed to Jesus, though he could not possibly have spoken them. When the sons of Zebedee asked for the chief
places in Christ's kingdom, he replied (x. 38).
"Can
ye drink of the cup that I drink of and be baptized with
the baptism that I am baptized with?"
This joining
of the cup and baptism is surely a figurative allusion
to the two Christian sacraments.
But as the content
of the pericope is a prophecy of the death of James
and John, a vaticinium ex evenhi, the allusion to the
eucharist placed in Jesus's
mouth
is
also certainly later
than his time.
From
the earliest days
it
has been recognized that
the miraculous feeding of the multitudes
is
symbol of
mankind by the communcommentator on the Synop-
the spiritual nourishment of

ion bread.
John, the
first
and joined to it his version of the

sacramental words attributed to Christ."^
How carefully the symbolism is carried out is shown in one narso took
tics,
i<>5
viii.
it,
Loisy, L'evangile selon

flF.
Cf, John vi.
Marc, 191
flF;
225
flr,
to
Mark
vi. 32 ff
and

rative of
as
Mark
was done
63
by the seating of the people in groups,

and in his other narra-
in the early church,
tive
by the instructions to pick up the fragments. This
may
be compared with the meticulous instructions given
by Tertullian,"^ and followed in the Roman Church

to-day, to let none of the precious body of the Lord
be left on the floor, if dropped.
The
use of fish in connection with the eucharist at
Rome where Mark
wrote has been noticed above. The
reason for his repetition of substantially the same mira-
probably to be found in his use of sources, though

has been conjectured that he wished to symbolize the
cle is
it
callings of the
Jews and Gentiles
respectively.
Matthew and Luke add nothing on this subject to Q

and Mark. In Luke, however, we have an interesting
problem on which I believe I can throw light.
headed by D, omit the words
textual
Some
manuscripts,^**^
(xxii.
i9b-2o)
brance of me.
per,
"given for you.
And
in like
saying. This cup
which
is
is
Do
manner
this in
the covenant in
The
poured out for you."
remem-
the cup, after sup-
my
blood,
textual evidence
together with "the suspicious resemblance of this pas-
sage to
bracket
ly
it
Corinthians" led Westcott and Hort to
The words
as an interpolation.
taken from Paul, but as
Luke borrowed them
It
is
are evident-
just as possible that
as that his copyist did,
and as
most of the decisive authorities,

Von Soden and regarded as genuine by Jullcher, Cremer, Clemen, Schweitzer, Lambert, and others.^"
If, then, they were in the original,
they are present
in
they are retained by
106
Dg
corona mil., 3.
Besides D, the old African and Italic Latin versions omit them,
and Tatian changes the order of words.
1'^
108
Lambert, 245.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
64
why
does the Codez Bezae
answer
is
The
this:
(D) omit them?
reviser of
ably the scribe of an earher manuscript he copies),
from Asia
The
(or rather, prob-
from Ephesus,
was
which
place there was the strongest opposition both to Paul
and to his eucharistic doctrine. The Disciples of John
there, as is proved by the Odes of Solomon "" and the
Johannine writings, presently to be discussed, refused
to take the eucharist bread or to recognize it as the
flesh
Minor,^*'^ probably
of Christ.
Even
at
as late as the second century the
Docetae of Asia Minor, probably an offshoot of the

Johannites, took the same position."^
Now
the re-
manuscript represented by
and the
Latins did not dare to omit the story of the institution
viser of the
words implying a
and the command to repeat. Like the Fourth
Evangelist later he hoped thus to keep the spiritual
lesson and to avoid the ritual repetition.
as a whole, but he did delete the
sacrifice
Acts occasionally mentions the celebration of the

Supper (ii. 42; xx. 7), but as it adds nothing to our
knowledge, save to show that it and Paul's interpretation of it were thoroughly established in the community and at the late date at which Luke wrote, the book
need not be further noticed.
Of the New Testament writings there remain to be
discussed only the Gospel and First Epistle of John.
On their teaching the most extraordinary diversity of
Some scholars have denied
opinion has prevailed.
refers
the
eucharist at all.
Others
Gospel
to
the
that
have seen in it only an intensification and emphasis of
in the Roman Empire, 151 ff.
Preserved Smith, "The Odes of Solomon and the Disciples of
John," Monist, April 1915, pp. 186 f.
Ill Ignatius ad Smyrn., 6.
109
11"
Ramsay, Church

the sacramental theory of Paul.
John
Many
''spiritualizes" Paul's teaching,
6s
think that
though without
saying definitely how. The data are these (

i ) John
omits the account of the Last Supper and substitutes
for it foot-washing, with a probable allusion
to baptism. (2) In the sixth chapter he joins
to the narrative
of the miraculous feeding a long discourse of
Jesus on
:
the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking

his blood:
"I am the bread of life.
He who cometh
unto
shall
never hunger and he
never thirst."
from heaven.
live forever.
my
flesh
which
"I
am
who
the living bread coming
me
shall
down
If any one eat of this bread he shall

For the bread which I shall give him is
is
for the life of the world.
Jews contended with one another saying,
man
me
believeth on
give us his flesh to eat?
them. Verily, verily

flesh of the Son of
Then
say unto you,
if
Then
How
the
can this
said Jesus to
ye eat not the
man and drink not his blood, ye

have not life in yourselves. The feeder on my
flesh
and the drinker of my blood hath life eternal,
and I
shall raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is true
nourishment and my blood is true drink. The
feeder
on my flesh and the drinker of my blood
remaineth in
me and I in him." Knowing the methods of the Fourth
Evangelist, his total independence of historical
tradition
and his custom of writing into the narrative the
lessons
he thoughbieeded
debate,
in his
own
nowhere recorded
day,
it is
easy to see in this
in the Synoptics, the contra-
versy actually
in process at Ephesus, between the

PaulChristians on one side and the Jewish and
Baptist
parties in the Church on the other.
(3) It is possible
that there is some allusion to the
eucharist in the story
of the wedding at Cana, but, if so, it is
me
vague and not
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
66
to our purpose."^
from
The water and
the blood issuing
Jesus's side at the passion have been interpreted
as referring to the
two sacraments. It is quite possible

that the parable of the true vine (John xv. iff) situated as it is in Jesus's last discourse to the disciples, is
an allusion to the eucharist cup, suggested by Mark
It is noteworthy that the prayer of consecra-
xiv. 25.
tion in the
Didache connects the cup with the vine of
David.
How
shall
we
interpret these seemingly conflicting
data? Why did John refuse to regard the Last Supper as historical, while embodying the doctrine of the
flesh and blood of Jesus in such strong language? Did
he omit the Last Supper simply as he omitted the baptism of Jesus and as he says that the master baptised
not, but his disciples, as
though
to sacramental acts?"'
were superior
His Jesus, who
his Christ
Surely not.
weeps and suffers hunger and washes his disciples' feet,

is not above eating with them a ritual meal.
Oj does
he transpose the institution of the eucharist to the earaccount of the feeding of the multitudes to show
that Jesus's eating with his disciples was no new thing
at his death, but that his every meal with them was
consecrated? This view"* also seems insuflicient, and
lier
at variance
with certain verses
in the discourse
quoted
above (John vi).
The
found
112
solution of the enigma,

in the situation at
John
ii.
1 ff.
am
persuaded, will be
Ephesus where the evangelist
His sources were
Mark
ii.
18-22; Matt. xxii. 1-14;
Luke
xiv. 15-24, and IV Ezra X.

Similar tales were told of Dionysus
turning water into wine at his epiphany. This pericope was in ancient rituals a lesson for Epiphany.
Bacon, H. T. R., 1915, p. 115.
113
John
iv.
2.
schung, 157 ff.

11* Bacon,
434
f,
Schweitzer advances this view, Paulinische For-
maintains
it.
67
wrote. There, as we know (Acts xviii. 19 ff) was a

church founded by Paul, in which, naturally^ the eucharist would be celebrated.
But there was also a
powerful element in the church drawn from the Disciples of
John,"^
who had no
doubtless oppose
absorbed
in
it,
just
as
eucharist,
the
and who would
Bohemian Brethren
Protestantism for long kept their
own
dis-
But we have already proved from

Hebrews, from Colossians and from the D recension
tinctive
tenets.
of Luke
xxii,,
ist,
and
was opposition
that there
especially
at
Ephesus.
sources of the Fourth Gospel are

tics,
to the euchar-
Now, though the

many
the Synop-
the Apocalypse, Philo, the Hermetic literature,
and of course the Jewish scriptures

the ones from
which he drew most heavily for his doctrine were the
Pauline epistles and Odes of Solomon,"" these latter
written at Ephesus by the Disciples of John, and consequently full of allusions to baptism, but with none
to the eucharist.
Unhampered as he was by any trace
of independent tradition, "'^ he felt free to deal with the
facts as he liked. As a follower of Paul he wished to
preserve and emphasize the great spiritual lesson which
he found in the words about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus. On the other hand he could not
ignore the Disciples of John and their heirs, supported
as they were by Jewish Christians, who abominated the
supper as a heathen rite.
Whether the evangelist
had once himself been a disciple of the Baptist re^^5 Acts, xix.
obvious and
1915,
lis
^^^
p.
186
is
flF.
also
That the Disciples would have no eucharist is

proved by the Odes of Solomon. Monist, April,
f.
So Harnack.
Monist, 1915, pp. 171
ff.
This fact, still disputed, has been pretty well established by

Loisy, Bacon and others.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
^8
mains uncertaln/^^ but that he did write with them

constantly in his eye has long been recognized."^
He
therefore rejected the founding of the eucharist, and
substituted for it a washing reminiscent of the one sacrament universally accepted, while at the same time
conserving the lesson that Jesus
Not without reason does
his
the bread of
is
life.
language hark back to the
Jewish Scriptures, to the Apocrypha and to Philo,^^"

In showing that the Logos is the true nourishment of
the soul.
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man
and drink
By
this
eral
his blood," says he, "ye have no life in you."

he would not have understood in the old, lit-
way: "It
is
profiteth nothing.
the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh
The words
that
speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life" (John vi 6^)

then shall we explain the emphasis on the
How
"water and the blood," i. e., the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, in John xix. 34 and i John v.
6? It has been proposed to regard the "blood" here
simply as an allusion to the passion. It Is probable
that the Docetae,^^^ at whom these verses may have
been aimed, denied the passion, and It has been shown
that it would be most appropriate to connect the blood
of martyrdom with the water of baptism, for the one
might well follow the other.^'^ Such an explanation
would obviate
all difl'iculties,
but
am
Inclined, never-
^18
Gardner, Ephesian Gospel, 87 f.

Baldensperger, Der Prolog zum vierten Evangelium, 1897;
Dibelius, Johannes der Tdufer, 191 1 B. W. Bacon, Fourth Gospel, 290,
^^9
120
4; Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 29; Pfleiderer, Primitive

Probably also to the supersubstantial
Christianity, 1906 flF, IV, 231 ff.
bread of the Lord's prayer.
121 This explanation offered by Bacon.
122 So R. Winterbotham in Expositor, 1911, 62 ff, and
J. Denney,
ibid., 1908, 416 ff.
The latter regards the "blood" as referring primarily to the passion and martyrdom, secondarily to the eucharist.
Psalm
Ixxviii.

theless, to see at least a
charist in the "blood."
69
secondary allusion to the tu-
If this
is
true there
certainly
is
a contrast to the teaching of the earlier chapters of
the gospel.
John
iii.
can be instantly seen by comparing
It
with
John
v. 6.
The
first
passage reads
"Except a man be born by water and the spirit, he

cannot enter the kingdom of God."
The second:
"This is he that cometh by water and blood and spirit,
Because these three are witJesus Christ
In
nesses, the spirit and the water and the blood."
then,
the
spirit
and
the first chapter of the gospel,
baptism were all that was necessary, but in the epistle
and in the later, probably subsequently added, verse
in the gospel, the eucharist is joined with them as one
.
There are unusually strong
of the means of salvation.
reasons for claiming that this verse
Bacon, ^^^
added.
among
is
that the whole of chapter xxi, and that
The
are added by a later editor.
verse
is
overwhelming;
subsequently
other authorities, recognizes
it
John
xix.
35
evidence for the last
"And he
reads:
seen hath borne witness, and his witness
is
that hath
true,
and
man knoweth he speaketh the truth that ye may

believe."
The introduction without antecedent of
that
"that man,"
sible
in
iKlvo<;,
Hie,
would be simply incomprehen-
the original narrative.
The word
points to
some one else. The

new and disputed fact,
the author of the gospel as seen by
solemn asseveration, as to a
also strongly indicates editorial revision.
Now
it
is
absurd to regard the asseveration, and that alone, as

Something else must have been introinterpolated.
duced with it, something to which the asseveration apand this can only be the previous verse about the
plies,
123 p.
191.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
70
was added by the

from the epistle. If we
regard the gospel and the epistle as by the same hand,
water and the blood.

editor,
we
who
This, then,
introduced
it
are then reduced to the necessity of reconciling
the omission of the eucharist in one to

in the
other document.
The
epistle, the
recognition
"In old age, when he
^^*
suggested by Percy Gardner:
wrote the
its
true explanation has been
Evangelist seems to have relied,
was natural to a man of failing powers, somewhat

more on the visible rites of the church." It is reas
markable that we find exactly such a change in Luther's

dogma, and that completed in ten short years. In
1520 he put the essence (res) of the sacrament in the
Word, and stated that the actual rite was not necessary to salvation; in 1530 he was ready to affirm that
the real essence (res) of the sacrament was in the
elements, and that participation in them was absolutely
indispensable to secure their benefits.
So with the
Evangelist; in his younger years the spiritual lesson
was all important; later, as the rite became more firmly established and as he became more ecclesiastical,
he accepted the communion as essential.
Most of the Gnostic sects known to us adopted
the eucharist, with its ideas of immolation and the-
Many of their dogmas were probably

founded directly on mystery cults with which they
were connected in pre-Christian times. How easily
pagan ideas amalgamated with Christian is seen in the
ophagy.^^^
eucharistic prayer in the Acts of
communion of
the male
Thomas:
Come
^^
"Come,
thou that
^^Êphesian Gospel, 213.

125 A good
account of their dogmas in W. M. Groton, pp. 35
126 Chaps, xlix
and 1 Pick, Apocryphal Acts, 268 f.
;
flF.
dis-

closest
secrets
and makest manifest the mysteries.
Come and communicate

Here emerge
ist."
the mysteries and of

the
manner of
71
the
with us
in
thy euchar-
two primitive conceptions of
communion with
the divine after
sex.
Clement of Rome in the first century calls the communion an offering and a sacrifice. ^^^ By making it the
"liturgy" par excellence of the church, he puts it in
the place of the highest form of divine worship which
it
has ever since held
in the
Roman
church.
Ignatius also thinks of it as a sacrifice, and as

charged with a magical quality for keeping both body
and soul deathless.
"The bread," says he, "is the
medicine of immortality, the antidote preserving us
that
we should not
die,
but live
forever in Jesus
^^^
This is but a literal interpretation of

John's teaching by a younger contemporary. Ignatius
also states plainly that the body is the same as that
which suffered on the cross. ^^^
According to Justin Martyr, "God, anticipating all
the sacrifices offered in his name by the command of
Jesus Christ, namely the eucharist of the bread and
the cup, which are offered by Christians in all places
throughout the world, testified that they are well-pleasing unto him." ^^** He also speaks of the eucharist as
becoming the body and blood of Christ through the
prayer of the Logos. To him also it is a memorial of
"the passion and a magical charm for giving men imChrist."
Ad Cor. 40, 44; cf. 36. Srawley, Encyclopedia of Religion and

Ethics, V, 546; Encyclopaedia Britannica, IX, 868; Goguel, 224; Lambert, 412.
127
128^^
129
'^^^
Srawley, 546.
Ad Rom., 7.
Dialogue ivith Trypho, iij.
Ad
Eph., 20.
Smyr., 6
;
547; Lambert 415.
cf.
First
Apology,
66,
6j.
Srawley,
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
72
His comparison of this sacrament with that

of MIthra has already been mentioned.
In this connection It Is Interesting to note that with him and with
a number of other early Christians, the elements were
not bread and wine but bread and water. ^"
Paul
mortality.
speaks only of the "cup," without denoting

tents,,
its
but both he and the gospels imply that
it
con-
was
wlne.^^^
was the
on the element of sacrifice that

gave rise to the rumors In the Roman world of "Thyestean banquets."
Early In the second century Pliny "^
felt it necessary to Inform Trajan that the meal partaken of by the Christians was of harmless and ordinary food, and that he found nothing criminal in It
but only a perverse and excessive superstition. In the
same letter he uses the word sacramentum of the morning service, but does not connect It with the supper
which was eaten later in the day. The word, which as
we have seen was already used of the rites of Bacchus
and Isis, became the regular translation of the Greek
"mysterium," the initiation into holy secrets and magIt
Insistence
ical practices characteristic
of
ions," including Christianity.
all
the "mystery-relig-
The word
found
is
in
the Septuagint only In the latest books, Daniel and
when the Hellenization of the Jews

was well under way.
Though Clement of Alexandria does not emphasize
the Apocrypha,
the sacrificial aspect of the eucharlst, he
with the conception of
upon
131
132
sacrifice
and neither the idea of the
a victim,
Harnack, Brot und Wasser.

X
Cor.
xi.
133 Ep.,
96.
21
Mark
T.
xiv. 25 etc.
&
Is
familiar
as originally a feast
real pres-
U., VII, 2, 1891.
73
ence nor that of transubstantiation are foreign to his
thought."*
bread and wine an offering to God

the Father of the body and blood of his Son, and says
that it is efficacious for the body as well as for the
soul. When consecrated, the bread is no longer bread
but of two elements, a heavenly and an earthly, and
prepares our bodies for the resurrection.
He comIrenaeus
pares
calls the
to the sacrifices of the
it
Jews
to
its
advantage,
as being offered by children, not servants."^
As has been shown,

the
God was
to
the fundamental idea in eating
become
like
him.
This was carried
so far in the pagan religions, that the initiates not only
imitated
what
the
god was fabled
have done, but

The adorer of
to
were actually called by his name.

Bacchus became a Bacchus; the follower of Attis was
called Attis. "
This idea could not be better expressed than it was by Cyril of Jerusalem, who, in his
Fourth Mystagogic Catechism teaches "By taking the
body and blood of Christ, you become one body and
blood with him. For thus we become Christ-bearers
(xpi'f^Tofopoi) by his body and blood being digested into
our members." "^ The language of ritual again became the mother of legend, and the myth of St. Christopher was born.
The "highest" doctrine of the sacrifice of the communion is found in Cyprian near the middle of the
third century.
"The priest," says he, "imitates what
Christ did, and offers then in the church of God the
:
^3* Tollington, Clement

of
135 Adv. Haer., IV. xviii,
Alexandria, 1914, II, 155.

De corpore et sanguine,
4.
Srawley, 547.
136
As
^37
Quoted, Dietrich, 107.
in Catullus's
famous poem of that name.
V,
ii,
2.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
74
Father a true and complete
"The
passion of the
Lord
Cyprian's idea of the
is
sacrifice."
^^
the sacrifice
effect
and again:
we
offer."
^^^
of the magic food was
that of the savage medicine-man.
He
tells
in
one
who had eaten some meat sacrificed

and thus became possessed by devils. When
she came to the Lord's table, she accordingly refused
the consecrated cup and fell into fits."
A similar
magical effect Is attributed to the host by the Acts of
Thomas."^ A youth who had murdered his mistress
partook of the eucharist and immediately his hand
withered. The Apostle forthwith Invited him to conplace of a
little girl
to idols
fess his crime,
"for," said he, "the eucharist of the
Lord hath convicted
thee."
that the magic of the host
but as primitive as the
The
It
is
Is
well to bear in
not a medieval Invention
rite Itself.
DIdascalla, In the second half of the third cen-
tury, speaks of "offering the acceptable eucharist,

is
the
mind
symbol
{avTirvrrav)
of
the
royal
which
body
of
Christ." In the next age the Apostolic Constitutions call

the bread and wine "symbols (dvTtrvTra) of his precious
body and blood" and an "unbloody sacrifice," cele-
brated to
commemorate
the
Lord's
death. "^
The
Paullclans and ThronakI also allegorized the eucharist."^
Eusebius of Caesarea says that Christians are "fed

with the body of the SavIour,"and that Christ delivered to his disciples the symbols of his divine incarna138
Ep. LXVIII,
14.
Mirbt, 24b.
^^Îbid., 17.
''^^
De
lapsis, cap. 25.
1" Cap. XLVIII.

"2 Srawley, E. R.
1*2
Dietrich, 107.
E., v. 549.
Conybeare, "Paulicians," E. B.

tion,
make
charging them to
75
own
the image of his
(Are we listening to the priest of Aricia and

image of the Wood-King baked in bread?) Here
and elsewhere the words for image (ctxwv, figura)^ im-
body/**
his
ply the real presence.
made him dread any
Tertullian's fetishism
He
pect offered to the magic food.

ling the Lord's
The bread he
disres-
speaks of "hand-
body" and of "offering violence
to it."
also calls the "figure of the body,"
and
"that which represents the body," without, however,
Rather than saying

with the body,
bread
that he began to confound the
it is truer to see in him the first to distinguish them."^
implying that the body
In
and
many
is
absent.
writers of the period of
fall the sacrificial
Rome's
idea comes to dominate
decline
all
oth-
ers.
Some such idea haunted the mind of Athenagoras when he speaks of "the bloodless sacrifice of Christians," as the counterpart of the blody
of
sacrifice
the
cross.
Thus does
Cyril
of
Jeru-
salem dilate upon the "holy and most awful sacrifice,"

"Christ immolated for our sins to propitiate God who
loves men," offered in the eucharist. Thus Chrysostom
gloats over "the Lord lying slain, and the priest standing over the victim praying, all reddened with that
blood."
'''
on the primitive church,

pertinent to notice one question which early came
Before closing
it is
this section
up, as to ministration of
the
first,
women had
women
had prophesied with the men.

^**
De
in the eucharist.
Solemnitate Pasch.,
in divine service
7.
"5 Srawley,
"^>^
From
and
Such were the daugh-
taken a part
E. R. ., v. 549.
Sacerdot., VI, 4; Srawley, E. R. E., 551
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
76
ters of Philip the Evangelist,
from whom, according
Harnack,"^ Luke derived much of his peculiar material.

But St. Paul opposed it."^ As, however, the
practice continued here and there, we meet with later
efforts to deal with it.
The most interesting of these
is in the Apostolic Church Order.^^
It is but one
to
instance of
many
to
show the
men to refer back to authority,

command of God covering the
inveterate tendency of
and,
if
there
is
not a
subject they desire to
deal with, to invent one.

Just as Paul fabled that
Christ had instituted the Supper, so the later author
write history as follows: "The Apostle

'You have forgotten, brethren, that when
the master demanded the cup and the bread and consecrated them with the words. That is my body and
blood, he did not allow them [sc. Mary and Martha]
to come to us.'
Martha said, 'It was on account of
Mary, for he saw her smile.' Mary said: 'I did not
laugh; it is rather as he said to us before that weakness should be saved by strength.' " ^^^
This obvious invention did not entirely suppress the
abuse at which it was aimed, or else the practice
cropped up afresh from time to time. The service of
felt free to
John
said:
women
Nimes
was condemned by a council of

but
still
persisted in certain parts of
394,
In the sixth century in Brittany women called
at the altar
in
France.
"conhospites" offered the blood of Christ to the people
and carried the elements around on portable altars.

This "unheard-of superstition" was denounced and sup^*8
Luke
the Physician.
1*9 I Cor. xiv.

34 ff; cf.
150 Bauer, Das Leben
Apocryphen, 1909,
151 1,
e.,
woman
165.
Tim. ii. 12.

im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen
Jesu
Pick,
by man.
Paralipomena, 68
f.
77
pressed by the bishops Licinius of Tours and Melaine

of Rennes. It continued elsewhere, however until the
ninth century/^^
152 Monumenta Germ. Hist., Leges, I, cap.

I owe this
2, p. 42.
reference to Dr. R. J. Peebles. Other examples of women who dispensed the eucharist in the early church or in heretical sects given in
article ^'Frauendmter," in R. G. G.', Lydia Stocker, Die Frau in der
alien Kirche, 1907; L. Zscharnack, Der Dienst der Frau in den ersten
Jahrhunderten der christlichen Kirche, Gottingen, 1902.
III.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Ever since the Reformation, Protestants have been

accustomed to think of transubstantiation as the inept
invention of a barbarous age, taking literally words
originally figurative.
This is almost the inverse of the
Transubstantiation does not indicate a coarser
truth.
conception of the real presence than that held by the

primitive Christians, but a finer one.
It was an attempt, not to impose a
new and
words of consecration, but
to
irrational sense
on the
explain them.
Much
of the history of theology has been the effort to find

rational theories for absurd practices.
The
practice
absurd simply because the age has outgrown it, and,

with the progress of time, the quondam explanation
is outgrown in its turn, is denounced, and a new one is
found.
The Orphics felt the absurdity of eating raw
is
and invented their myth of the
flesh sacramentally,
eaten Dionysus to give a valid theory for the ancient

survival.
When
religions,
evolved from his inner consciousness the
myth
Paul, on the analogy of the mystery
of a Saviour
who
should
die,
be eaten, and
rise
again, he felt that the only explanation of the mysteries
necessary was the story of Jesus, part of which he had
heard from others, part of which came to him by direct

revelation.
Jesus, he taught, must have done and said
certain things, and this was enough to make the estab^Wrede: Paul, (English), pp. 164,
Murray and others have shown that the
is
pre-Christian.
Murray,
Hibbert Journal, 1913, 744
178,
180.
Reitzenstein,
G.
idea of the Gnostic Saviour

Greek Religion, 143 f, with references;
f.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
lished rites valid for his initiates.
79
For the majority
of early Christians the same was true.
But as times changed, and as the church expanded

and began to take in learned and intellectual men, the
myth was no longer all-sufficient. The fundamental
idea of the absorption of deity by killing and eating
it became less obvious.
Men began to speculate how
the bread and wine they ate could be the very body and
blood of immolated God. And thus, turning to Aristotle or to other philosophers, they
evolved the
dogma
of a transmutation in the substance of the elements
without
my
As some
men asked
change
in the "accidents."
the question, which apparently never oc-
curred to Paul,
how
the bread could be the body,
can be traced to a high antiquity.
Even
of the second century spoke of a change

to a spiritual potency,
remained constant.^
the heretics
dox.
Thus
who
it
first
is,
but,
it
the Gnostics
in the
elements
though the outward appearance

Thus, as we see so often, it was
advanced the dogma later ortho-
because the thinkers
ceive the difficulties in the old, ipso facto

tics,
moment
such explanation was inevitable the
who
first
per-
become here-
as they are merely the forerunners of the
future, the first to sense
what
will
soon be obvious to
all, their new explanation gradually becomes more and

more natural and widely accepted. In this case their
speculations entered the church by Clement of Alexan-
whose ideas approach that of transmutation of

the elements.^
Irenaeus * distinguishes two factors in
the bread, which, after consecration, is no longer
dria,
2
2
Clemens Alex., Exc. Theodoti, 82.

R. B. Tollington, Clement of Alexandria, ii. 155.
Srawley, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, v. 547.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
8o
bread, but an earthly material and a heavenly com-
The
bined.
latter
is
absorbed by the
spirit,
the former
prepares the body of the recipient for resurrection.

Cyril of Jerusalem expounds the idea of conversion,
and Gregory of Nyssa compares the sacramental

in the bread and wine to that which food and
drink underwent when Jesus ate them, and thus by
digestion made them his body.^
After the year 400
the terrris implying a change in the elements became
common. In the East we hear Chrysostom saying that
he "buries his teeth in Christ's flesh," and that he
who is seated on the right hand of God is held in the
hands of all.^ The effect of the sacrament was conceived in the most literal way.
Gregory of Nyssa, in
language worthy of the Cretan Orphic or of Paul, says
change
that "Christ infused himself into our perishable nature,
communion with
that by
deified."
makes
believers of one
(ôvcrawfioi Koi (rvvatfioL
Ambrose was
sance
mankind might be
body and one blood with
tov Xpiarou)
Christ,
the father of transubstantiation in the
His authority was held high not only
West.
own
the Deity
Cyril of Jerusalem states that the eucharist
in his
day, but in the time of the Carolingian renais
and of the Reformation.^"
He
speaks of the
elements being transformed, and of offering the transfigured body.
De
In the
Mysteriis, the authenticity
of which has been doubted,

grounds,
5
^
Ambrose or
know not on what
his imitator
expounds at length
Srawley, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,

In Johann., 47, 46, 3.
v. 550.
''
De
Srawley, E. R. E., v. 551.
Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, iii. 310.

Quoted, e. g., by Henry VIII against Luther, O'Donovan, 212.
10
sacerd.
iii.
4.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
8i
the doctrine of conversion, in exactly the style later
The change, according to him, is caused by

words "this is my body." "
But in that very age there were great Fathers of the)
church who endeavored to give a more spiritual and
therefore a more symbolic meaning to the mode of
prevalent.
the
In this as in so
the real presence.
many
other things
Jerome and Augustine were the precursors of the

Reformation. Their language dimly, and not without ambiguity, sowed the seeds which ripened more
than a millenium later.
Jerome speaks of the bread
as "showing forth the body of the Saviour," and as "a
memorial of redemption." " Augustine went deeper,
Like Luther he
to the very foundations of religion.
believed that faith
was the all-important element
in sal-
and thus he necessarily relegated ceremonies to

somewhat subordinate position. ^^Crede et mandu-:
castV^ ^^ is his justly famous application of this princi-j
vation,
a
pie to the Lord's Supper.

tial;
Faith, therefore,
is
essen-i
not the actual eating of the bread and wine, for
body and blood," and the

but "a sacrament of commemoration of
these are but "signs of the
whole
rite
Christ's sacrifice."
^*
This
is all
implied in his definias the
tion of sacrament, later universally adopted,
outward and
grace.
And
language.
visible sign of
yet he
an inward and spiritual
was not always
consistent in his
Like Luther later he at times
felt
the
and really self-confaith

the bread were
both
and
tradictory, thesis, that
necessary; that Christ was "offered up once for all in
necessity of maintaining a double,
11
Harnack,
12
13
Srawley, ibid.
In Johann. xxv.
1*
Contra Faustum, xx.
loc.
cit.,
Srawley, E. R. E., v. 551.
12.
21.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
82
own person, and yet was offered up daily in the

sacrament among the congregations." ^^
^
But Augustine was far ahead of his age. In two
centuries the cruder doctrine of the eucharist had behis
come
official.
Gregory the Great goes into a rhapsody
on the duty of daily immolating to God the offering
of his flesh and blood.^
So great was its power of
mollifying an offended Deity, that it was able to loose
from the pains of purgatory. As to Paul, so to

was vouchsafed on this
subject.
In a dream he witnessed a poor soul in purgatory, whose torture was abated as often as mass was
souls
the pope, a special revelation
said for him."
As
is
frequently the case, the coarser and grosser
doctrine drove out the
of the numbers of
more
spiritual
adherents.
its
by mere weight
The masses
are
never able to grasp the finer ideas of the leaders of

thought, and they are stubbornly attached to the old
and customary. So we find Paschasius Radbert, in the
ninth century,
transmutation
not so
when he
set
much Ambrose and
quoted, as the
forth the doctrine of a
in the elements, stating for his
authority
whom
he might have
opinion of mankind.
The folothers
common
who opposed him were crushed
The first of these was Ratramnus, who
lowers of Augustine
by authority.
asserted that the body and blood were
symbols. ^^
Two
hundred years
mere
figures or
later Berengar,
whom
the Catholics always cite as the precursor of Zwingli,

15 Ep. 98.
Somewhat compressed. The Paulicians held a doctrine
resembling that of the Quakers, that no bread and wine were needed
in the eucharist, and that Christ had used none.
See F. C. Conybeare,
"Paulicians," in Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
1^ Dialogi Quattuor de vita et miraculis patrum, iv.
56.
1'^
In evangelia, ii. 37, 8.
1^ Mirbt, 96.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
maintained the doctrine of a
with a corporeal, presence.
unheard
in
1050, and
spiritual,
83
as contrasted
But he was condemned
1059 was forced to sign
in
confession that, "the bread and wine after consecra-
body and blood of our Lord

and are sensibly, not only in
the sacrament but in truth, held and broken in the
hands of the priest, and consumed by the teeth of the
faithful." ^^
The significance of the whole controversy from Radbert to Berengar was not so much that it
established the dogma of change in the substance of the
elements, for this had been pretty well established before, as that it thoroughly ventilated the subject and
unified the hitherto somewhat fragmentary teachings
tion
are the true
Jesus Christ
Paschasius
of the church.
first
.^
treated the eucharist
from all points of view, and gave an explanation of some sort to all the practices of the
In opposing him Ratramnus " started a
church. ^
controversy the extent of which he could not have
exhaustively
grasped.
The schoolman
of the twelfth century contributed a
Then
was introduced the

distinction between the "substance" and the "accident,"
and then was coined the word "transubstantiation." ^^
This terminology was adopted and the form of the
suitable
vocabulary.
dogma permanently
in
cil
1215.
It
fixed
first
by the Fourth Lateran Coun-;

"There is one universal
decreed:
church of the faithful, outside of which no one at

is in
a state of salvation.
himself
19
20
21
22
is
both priest and
all
In this church Jesus Christ

sacrifice;
and
his
body and

Harnack, ibid., 311.
Not Radbert, as Protestant Harnack says, ibid. 316.
Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, iii. 385; Srawley, E. R. E.,
Mirbt, 113.
v. 558.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
84
blood are really contained In the sacrament of the altar

under the species of bread and wine, the bread being
transubstantiated into the body and the wine being
power of God,
order that, to effect the mystery of union, we ourselves might receive from him (de suo) what he himself has received from us {de nostro)^^^
This de-
transubstantiated into the blood, by the

in
was taken into the Canon Law, and put on a par

with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.^*
cree
Even Scripture was tampered with

as it constantly
has been in the interest of dogma
and the text about
"not discerning the body" (i Cor. xl. 29) was altered
to "not differentiating the substance." ^^
In like man-
ner
it
was again altered
in the official edition
of 1590,
to read, against the Protestants, "not discerning the
body of the Lord^

The schoolmen of the following period drew the
corollaries of the Lateran decree, and endeavored to
elucidate it.
Aquinas affirmed that the eucharist is a
sacrament as received and a sacrifice as offered. As to
the first aspect, the whole Christ, Man and God, is
present in both species and in every fragment.^
This
was necessary to be preached because of the custom,
begun in the twelfth century, of withholding the cup
from the laity.^'^ It is remarkable that Aquinas has so
little to say about the sacrifice, and, on the whole, conceives it so differently from Chrysostom.
The reason
is to be found in the change of emphasis in religion
between the fourth and the thirteenth century. To the
23
Mirbt, 143.
2*
Harnack, Dogmengesch.
iii.
386
f.
25 E. S. Buchanan, Expositor,
1915, pp. 420
26 Srawley, E. R. E., v.
Graebke,
559, 561;
27
Srawley, 563.
ff.
36.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
85
was with sacrifices

and scapegoats, the actual immolation of a victim to
appease the divinity was all important.
To the Germanic Christians of a thousand years later, the idea
of sacrifice was foreign, and that of magical charms of
all kinds was familiar.
What they wanted and what
they saw in the blessed food was therefore chiefly a
talisman.
To be certified of its authenticity was all
primitive Christian, familiar as he
they required.
As
consequences of the establishment of the doctrine
of transubstantiation, Harnack^^ enumerates,
ping of children's communion.

the priest,
who was
2.
i.
Stop-
Rise in respect for
power to perform
Withdrawal of the cup from
credited with the
a stupendous miracle.
3.
the laity, in order, probably, to
make
a distinction be-
tween laymen and priests. 4. Adoration of the elevated host.

It was natural that, if the wafer were
logical conseGod, it should be worshiped as such.
quence of this custom was the establishment in 1264,
of the festival of Corpus Christi day to celebrate, on
the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the miracle of the
making of
--
Christ's body.^^
new and comprehensive statement of Catholic

was called for by the Reformation and furnby the Council of Trent. The first decree on
doctrine
ished
main points of doctrine was

in 1551.
But the decree on the cup for the laity and communion of children, together with that on the sacrifice of the mass
and some other matters, on which it was expected the
Protestants would be heard, was postponed by the
the subject, covering the
passed at the thirteenth session
"^^
Dogmengesch.,
iii.
29
Srawley, E. R.
E., v. 560.
580
f.
R. G. G.,
s.
v.
"Fronleichnamsfest."
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
86
Legate, and not finally passed until the twenty-first

session in 1562.^
It
has been noted by Francis Bacon,
Harnack, and others, that the main source for the docpromulgated by the Council was not any written
authority, but the usage of the church.
This was regarded as decisive in all cases. Harnack puts the matter polemically, but truly, when he says all the bad
practices connected with the mass were sanctioned,
trine
down, to the last
letter.^^
The decree of October 11, 1551,^^ may be summarized as follows:

i. Jesus Christ, very God and
very man, is truly, really, and substantially present
under the species of bread and wine. The words of
Paul and the evangelists, "this is my body," must be
taken in their proper and plain meaning.
2. By this
spiritual food men are cleansed from daily faults and
preserved from mortal sins.
3. The eucharist is excellent above the other sacraments.
4. After consecration, the whole substance of bread is converted into
the whole substance of the body and the whole substance of wine into the whole substance of the blood
and this change is properly called transubstantiation.
5. The host is to be adored with the cultus latriae, or
form of worship owed to very God. The festival of
Corpus Christ! is confirmed. 6. The ancient custom
of taking the sacrament to the sick is approved.
7.
Confession is a necessary preparation for communion.
8. The self-communion of priests is a custom descending as it were from apostolic tradition.
The
decree of July 16,
30 Pastor, Gesch. d. Pdpste, vi. 82

3^ Dogmengsch., iii. 703.
32 Mirbt, 225
33Mirbt, 239
ff.
ff.
1562,^^ declares that the

f.,
vii,
219
f.,
226
fiF.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
granting of the cup to the laity
mand, and that though
who
It
Is
87
not a divine com-
has often been done, yet he

power and weighty rea-
denies that the church has
son for withholding

position
is
it,
shall be
The same
anathema.
taken about the communion
of children.
of the sacrifice of the mass was passed
The dogma
at the twenty-second session,
September 27, 1562.^^
It
declares that Christ, as a priest after the order of
supper offered his body and

blood under the form of bread and wine to God the
Father.
similar sacrifice is offered by the priest, as
Melchisedek, at the
last
proved by the words "This do In remembrance of

me," by Paul's words to the Corinthians ( i Cor. x.
20 f ) and by other passages of Scripture. It declares
further that 2. The sacrifice of the mass is propitiatory
for the living and dead. 3. It Is good to hold masses In
honor of the saints. 5. All the usual ceremonies are
right. 6. The mass in which the priest only communicates Is approved. 7. The mixing of water with wine Is
believed to have been done by Christ. 8. The mass is
not to be celebrated In any vulgar tongue, but its mysis
teries are to be explained to the people.
A brief resume of official
Catholic
dogma
faint picture of the Importance of the
out the Middle Ages.^^
and of
life.
It
was
It was the focus of religion

main factor In determining the
constitution of the church.

as the necessary
gives but a
mass through-
Control of the sacraments
means of salvation made
possible the
and the crusades, the humiliation of Henry

IV at Canossa and the sway of Innocent III. Penance and excommunication were realities; the priest
could open the gates of heaven and consign to hell.
interdict
3*Mirbt, 241 ff.

ssShotwell, iff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
88
The economic results of the doctrine of the eucharlst

were tremendous, because the endowment of masses
for the dead absorbed an immense amount of wealth.
As each mass was an act of propitiation, it was expedient to have as many of them as possible.^
Nor were
these acts of propitiation valid only for the good of the
soul.
sixteenth century author
apply masses "to
ists
^^
says that the pap-
soldjoures in war,
for faire
weather and rayne, for the plage pockes and such

other diseases, for beastes sicke of the morren." Mass
was
said in order to consecrate marriage, or to cele-
brate a great victory for the faith of Jesus, such as the
massacre of the Waldenses or of the Huguenots. It

was said on board ship to allay tempest, and, if the
bread and wine could not be obtained, the canon might
be said just the same without them.
In this case it was
called
"a
mass."
^^
mock mass," "a dry mass," or "a naval
probably best to explain the analogous custom

field of battle, when they
were In danger of death and no bread could be obIt Is
of giving to warriors on the
tained, in place of
It three blades of grass, or a bit of

earth by saying that the priest simply took whatever
was
Attempts to connect the custom with old
In reach.
superstitions about the magical properties of grass or
of mother earth seem rather far fetched. ^^ I have even

seen the statement somewhere that the proverb "to
bite the dust" is derived from this custom.
It is, however,
found
in
Homer.*''
36
Srawley, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, v. 562.

3^ Bancrafte, preface.
38 Missa sicca, missa
ficta, missa navalis, Du Cange, Glossarium
mediae et infimae Latinitatis, etc., s.v. "Missa."
39 G. L. Hamilton: "Sources
of the Symbolical Lay Communion,"
Romanic Remeiv,
40 Iliad
ii.
418;
191 3, iv. 221

xi. 749.
flF.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
89
The word "mass" or "missa" first met with In

Ambrose (or Pseudo-Ambrose) was
writings of
the
de-
from "mittendo," "that which sends

us to God," and by Bede either from "mittere," a word
used of sacrifice, or from "missus," a mess of food/^
Reuchlin,*^ followed by Melanchthon,^^ Zwingli ** and
Baronlus,^^ derived it from the Hebrew "massa" meaning "offering" or "tribute," (Deuteronomy, xvi. 10.)
Luther found the etymon in the Hebrew "Mauzzim,"
rived by Alculn
which he translated now as the name of a false God,*'^

and again defined as "a lucrative cult for the sake of
money or
gain."
*''
The
true derivation
is
doubtless
from the words spoken to the catechumens just before

the communion service, "Ite, missa est."
As the host became the center of worship and of
magic, the fetishism connected with it grew to incredible proportions.
There Is a truth in Harnack's ob-\
servation that the placing, by the Fourth Lateran Council, of the dogma of the eucharist on an equality with
those of the Trinity and Incarnation was the boldest
and most characteristic deed of the Middle Ages.*^ /
Hysterical saints received visions of Jesus telling them
that the most precious thing on earth was his holy
corpse which was daily transmuted by the priest.* Improving on TertuUian, the Synod of Cologne provided
'
^1
^^
*3
**
4^
Du Cange, s.v. "Missa."

De rudimentis hebraicis, 1506,
p. 289.
Corpus Ref., xxiii. 65 f.

Corpus Ref., Ixxxix. 567.
Du Cange, s.v. "Missa."
*6 In
Daniel
xi.
38
(German Bible); Conversations
ivith
Luther,
145^"^
here,
Drews,
the
70.
Though Luther
meaning he gives
it
distinctly used the
word "Mauzzim"
shows that he probably confused
it
with "massa."
^s Dogmengesch'tchte, iii. 388.
*9 Vision of Adelheid Langmann in the fourteenth century, Dietrich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, preface.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
90
any consecrated wine was spilt the priest

should lick it up.^
Everything was done to make vivid
Thus
to the people the reality of the body and blood.
the bread was made in the image of a man and pierced
by the priest,^^ just as the great god of the Aztecs had
once been treated; hot water was used to increase the
resemblance of the wine to blood.^^ Eugenius IV tells
of a host at Divio which bled when cut by a sacrilegious
person.^
Caesarius of Heisterbach knew of many
cases when Christ had appeared in the hands of the
priest holding the host.^*
Paschasius Radbert, in stating why the transformation of bread and wine into
body and blood does not appear to the senses, says
first that it would be unnecessary and offensive, and
In
1280 that
then that
it
if
often did happen nevertheless.^^
The host was, in fact, regarded as a powerful charm.

As early as the time of Gregory of Nyssa we hear of
a sick woman named Gorgonia who was cured by visiting a
church and rubbing her body with the conse-
crated bread and wine reserved there."
Stephen of
Bourbon tells of a man who stole the host to get

wealth, and how some bees, finding it, had made a wax
church for it and stung a man trying to take it away.^*
Savonarola, after offering to submit to the ordeal by
refused to enter the flames without either the host
fire,
5
51
52
53
^*
Du
Cange, s.<v. "Ablingere."

Conybeare, "Eucharist," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Peebles, 208.
Du Cange, s.v. "Aqua."
Du Cange, s.v. "Hostia."
Dialogus miraculorum, quoted by J. H. Robinson, Readings in
European History, 1904, i. 355 f.

55 Harnack, Dogmengesch., iii.
57
J.
T.
58
D.
Stone,
S., xi.
i.
106.
Against
(1909-10), 27s
314.
this
interpretation
of the
passage,
f.
Quoted by Robinson, Readings
in
European History,
I.
355
f.
TRAN SUBSTANTIATION
91
A morsel of the host

or a crucifix to guard him.^"
bought from a priest or stolen was always the safest
The method
kinds of good luck.
charm for
all
treating
was sometimes singularly
mus
it
of a wizard at Orleans
tells
of
drastic.
Eras-
who bought
a frag-
ment of the Lord's body from a mass-priest, and

would get a virgin to stand over it with a drawn sword
as
if
threatening; thus he succeeded in invoking devils
to
do
his bidding, until at last he unintentionally called
up those
still
worse
devils, the inquisitors.*'"
It
was
believed that a parody of the mass would have great
power, and that
it
was the culmination of the wicked-
ness indulged in by witches at their Sabbaths.^
As a magic talisman the eucharist became a favorite

means of detecting crime. ^^ Rudolph Glaber, for example, tells
of a criminal
the eucharist, but who,
from
in clerical
dress
who swallowed
when it immediately emerged

Pope Gregory VII cleared
his navel, confessed.
himself of the charge of simony
in
1077 by taking the
eucharist.^^
But with
all
its
all its
machinery of heaven and
hell,
apparatus of myth, magic and miracle,
with
the
church was not able to produce reverence for the most
awful of her mysteries. Swearing by the mass and thus

"tearing the holy body of God omnipotent" was common in the age of faith. ^* Such proverbial phrases as
59 Pastor,
ation,
History of the Popes,
vi. 42.
Smith: Affe of the Reform-
18.
^ Epistle of Jan. 14,
1501; Allen, Ep. 143.

H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, iii.
Smith: Age of the Reformation, 654.
500.
^2 On this, Jacoby:
"Der Ursprung des Judicium Offae," Archiv
^1
fiir
Religionsivissenschaft, 1910, p. 525.

Du Cange, s.v. "Eucharistia."
^3
^*
Barclay: Ship of Fools (1509, from Brandt's Narrenschiff, 1494),
1874, " 132
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
92
"sacrificing the tail of the host,"
show little
immortality became a
a job, surely
respect.^^
meaning to complete
Nay, the holy drug of
favorite vehicle for shortening
Thus, among many examples, the Emperor Henry VII is said to have been
the life of enemies by poison.
murdered
On
in 1313.^^
the art and literature of the later
the doctrine of the eucharist
The Gothic
had
Middle Ages
a powerful influence.
cathedrals were consciously built around
the Lord's Table.
The
missals
a rare flower of illuminated letter
bloomed with many

and headpiece. One
of the greatest paintings of the Renaissance, Raphael's
Debate on the Sacrament, represents the supreme mys-
God hovering
above the sacred bread.
And the paintings of the
Last Supper are countless.
The popular literature of the later Middle Ages is
tery of the Catholic faith, the Triune
*^^
full
of stories of Jesus appearing in the host.
In
Malory's Le Morte d' Arthur, book xvii, chapter xx,

such a theophany to Galahad is recounted in these
words
"Then the bishop made semblaunt as though
he would have gone to the sacring of the mass. And
then he took an ubblie [wafer] which was made in
likeness of bread.
And at the lifting up there came
a figure in the likeness of a child, and the visage was
as red and as bright as any fire, and smote himself
into the bread, so that they all saw it that the bread
was formed of a fleshly man; and then he put it into
the Holy Vessel again, and then he did that longed to
:
a priest to do to a mass."
65
Du
66
J. F. Meyer, passim.
this, Pastor, History of the
67
On
Cange,
s.v.
"Hostia."
Popes,
vi,
560
ff.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
93
One of the most bizarre of medieval superstitions\

was that Jews would buy the consecrated bread in
order through it to torment Christ.
In the English
Play of the Sacrament,^^ they bought from a merchant
a host for one hundred pounds, and then "put hym to a
newe passyon with daggers gouen hym many a greuyos

wound; nayled hym to a pyller; with pynsons plukked
;
hym
At
doune."
terwards put
in a
the water red.
all this the host bled, and when afcauldron and boiled, its blood made
Put then into an oven, which burst
asunder and bled at the crannies, Jesus himself appeared in his own form and remonstrated with his
tormentors in bad Latin:
"O mirabiles Judei, atten-
meus
Oh ye
merveylows Jewys, why are ye to yower kyng onkynd?"
The Jews were immediately converted by this miracle,
and were given suitable penance to expiate their crime
dite et videte Si est dolor similis dolor
of torturing God.
The greatest poem of the Middle Ages, Dante's

Divine Comedy, glorifies transubstantiation.^^ This
purpose finally became the leading motive in the famous
legend of the Grail.
This is particularly interesting

showing how a legend, based on a pagan fertility
rite of sacrifice and theophagy was adapated to Christian purposes, transforming the sacrament of an older
as
religion into that of the current faith.
This was easdone as both sacraments had, though this was unknown to the medieval writers, similar origin and hisily
68 Fifteenth Century, reprinted, ]: M. Manley:

Specimens of the
Pre-Shakesperean Drama, 1903, i. 240 ff.
F'sher: The Mystic Vision in the Grail Legend and in
^^h- .^'
the Divine Comedy.
1917, Jessie L. Weston: The Court of the Holy
Grail, 1914, and the valuable review of this book by Winifred Smith
'
in the Dial,
May
i,
1914, pp. 385
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
94
tory.
two
Among
rituals, as
other points of resemblance between the
developed
In the
Middle Ages, we
find
that the service of the maidens in carrying around

the grail
who
was
similar to that of the
carried the eucharlst
among
women
altars.'"
TO
Peebles:
The Legend
of Brittany
the people on portable
of Longinus, 1911, p. 209.
IV.
CONSUBSTANTIATION
But though the church might, and did, delay the prowas fortunately unable to
dogmas, so in this of
other
As
in
stop it altogether.
the God made bread, there were always doubters.
Skepticism in Italy went so far that even the priests
gress of enlightenment, she
who
celebrated mass would say, instead of "this
is
my
^
body," "bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain."
More important for the history of dogma, though
far less radically rational, were the scruples of the

schoolmen at transubstantiation. Never doubting the
body and blood in the bread

sought some way of making it more
real presence of Christ's
and wine, they yet
than that defined by the Lateran Council.

So subservient is the human mind to the thought and
terminology of contemporaries, that the theory they
intelligible
upon was but one degree further along the road

from mystery to reason than was the theory they at-
hit
by
which the body was turned into bread, they proposed
consubstantiation, by which bread remained, but God's
body was added to it. Thus Durand held that "hoc
est corpus meum" meant "sub hoc est contentum corpus
meum." ^ William of Ockam formulated the idea
more plainly, teaching that the orthodox view was less
tacked.
likely
1
As
substitute
for
transubstantiation,
than that Christ's body was present with the
Luther says he heard
1538, Buchwald, 338.

2 Schaff, vol. V, part
ii.
this at
p.
190.
Rome
in 1510;
Sermon of April
19,
',
\
'
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
96
Most
bread.^
all, Cardinal d'Ailly said:

very possible that the substance of the bread
coexists with the substance of the body of Christ.
"It
clearly of
is
That mode
Is
nor
possible,
is
it
repugnant to reason
nor to the authority of the Bible; rather it is easier to

understand and more rational than any other mode
[of the real presence]."
Gabriel Biel
words
made
consubstantiation his
"The body
of Christ
is
own
not seen by
in these
us, neither
bitten by the teeth, nor perceived
by the taste, but

the species of the bread is both bitten and tasted, and
under it is contained the true, whole, and perfect body
is it
It Is instructive to see In this how graddogma shaded off Into the symbolism of the
simple memorial.
The next step after Biel was taken
by John Wessel, who taught that the Lord's Supper
of Christ."
ually the
was
by which the death of Christ is appropriated

Christopher Honlus, or Hoen, of the
Netherlands, took the dogma as far as any of the
Reformers when he suggested that in the words of
consecration, "is" meant "signifies," and that the presa rite
to the believer.
ence of Christ's body

speech.
Pica
words "This
not
Is
my
Is
therefore only a figure of
Mirandola
della
also
considered the
body," symbolic or "significative,"
literal.^
Though Wyclif Is commonly considered the most

Important of the medieval rebels from Rome, yet he
made no
of transubstantlatlon. His voluminous works are
attack on
dogma whatever,
Schaff, vol. V, part
^
5
Quaestiones,
Ashley, 254.
De Avondmaalsbrief van
A. Eekhof.
"^
lib.
iv,
ii,
filled
p. 192.
6, art. 2.
p.
Cornelius
191 7.
Schaff, vol. V, part
save on this point
ii,
p.
597.
Hoen
1525.
Uitgegeven door
CONSUBSTANTIATION
97
with denunciations of the practices of the clergy, and

of their morals, but one treatise only is distinctly new
and dogmatical.
As
a moralist he
was
irritated
idolatry of the host; as a scholastic he
by the
was offended
He,
by the absurdity of substance without accident.^
contemporaries, protested against the abuses

of masses for souls, but he never attacked the doctrine
of the sacrifice of the mass as such.^
Transubstantia-
like his
drew
tion
"This heresy," says
anger.
all his
he, "robs
them idolaters, denies the teaching

of Scripture, and moves Christ himself to wrath."
Through it "Antichrist subverts grammar, logic, all
natural science and even destroys the sense of the Gospel." ^
Wyclif examines and denies each of three
the people, renders
theories of the real presence, transubstantiation, iden-
and impanation. Christ is present, he says,

"sacramentally, spiritually or virtually" as the soul is
tification,
present in every part of the body.

An animal or a
man predestined to reprobation would no more partake
of Christ in the bread than a lion eating a man would
For his error on the sacrament, as well

was condemned by the English coun-
eat his soul.^^
as for others, he
of 1382.^^
cil
who followed Wyclif in almost everything

did not adopt his views on this subject.
His radical followers, however, known as the Taborites and
Bohemian Brethren, not only demanded the cup for the
Huss,
else,
laity,
but denied the efficacy of masses for the dead
Harnack, Dogmengesch.,
Ibid. 582
^
^1
f.
iii.
"
579.
Loserth "Wiclif" in R. G. G.
Trialogus, pp. 248, 261.

eucharistia, passim.
De
12 SchafF,
op.
13 Errors
cit.,
of the
150S, quoted by P.
320.
Bohemian Brethren drawn up by

S.
Allen:
Age
of Erasmus, 291.
J.
Lilienstayn in
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
98
and transubstantiatlon.^*
The Hussite Martin Hansk
taught that "in the sacrament of the altar there
is
not
body and blood of Christ, but only bread,

which is a sign, and that only when it is taken, of the
body and blood of Christ." ^^
the true
On
matter the church could not afford to parley;

but she was disposed to compromise on giving the cup
this
to the laity.
After long negotiations with the Council
of Basle, this was finally granted to the Bohemians in

a
compact of 1436.
The terms were
stated with
in-
tentional ambiguity, which resulted in the Council act-
ing as if the Bohemians had submitted and the Bohemians assuming that their views had triumphed. Not-
withstanding the subsequent machinations of
Rome
to
suppress them, they succeeded in maintaining themselves by force of arms.^
i^Schaff, op. cit., 388.

i5Janssen,2o ii. 455, note 2.
1^ Pastor, History of the Popes,
iii.
213
f.
LUTHER
V.
Before narrating the numerous controversies of

Luther on the eucharist, in the course of which will be
brought out the nuances and changes in his doctrine,
it may be well to sum up the constant elements in it,
and their sources. These are: i. Denial that the mass
2. Denial of transubis a good, or propitiatory work.
stantiation.
Assertion of a real presence "with,
3.
in the
bread," without scrutinizing the
mode
of this presence.
The words "impanation" and
"con-
substantiation,"
coined early by controversialists
under and
express his views, are not found
in his
own
to
writings,
and are not accepted by most Lutherans.
In
The
Babylonian Captivity
(1520), however, he quotes

d'Ailly in a way that shows he is very nearly in accord
with his theory, which may correctly be called "consubstantiation."
4.
Assertion that auricular confes-
though useful, is not a necessary preparation for

communion. 5. Advocacy, in general, of giving the
sion,
cup to the
What
laity.
are the sources and
acter of this position?
what
In the
first
is
the general char-
place
it
may
be con-
fidently asserted that Luther neither claimed to make,

nor made, any appeal to his senses.
Reason illuminated by God was indeed, said he, a help, but possessed
by the devil
^Weimar,
2
3
vi.,
it
506.
was
hindrance.^
"Reason
Harnack, Dogmengesch'tchte,
Smith, Luther,'^ p. xii.

Weimar, Tischreden,
i.
no. 439.
iii.
is
893, note
the
i.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
loo
devil's
bride,
who adorns
herself
and occupies the
church and thrusts God's word out." *

"If, outside
of Christ, you wish by your own thoughts to know
your relation to God you will break your neck. Thunder strikes him who investigates.
It is Satan's wisdom
what God is, and by it he will put you in

Therefore keep to revelation and do not
try to understand." Further quotation is superfluous.
It has often been recognized that the Reformation was
in point of dogma a singularly conservative movement.
Even Harnack admits that the one trenchant reform
Luther did make in ecclesiastical doctrine, that of the
to try to tell
the abyss.
sacramental system, was not due to his special enlightenment, but to "his inner experience that where grace
does not endow the soul with God, the sacraments are
an illusion." ^
But when a doctrine, for which no unmistakable

proof could be found in Scripture, appeared to him not
only illogical, but absolutely incomprehensible, and
immoral as well, he naturally rejected it. Thus his
early opposition to the sacrifice of the mass was not
due to any philosophical speculation about its intrinsic
but to the fact that conditions had
changed so much since the doctrine grew up that it
became almost incomprehensible to him. The Catholic church, indeed, was so deeply committed to the
dogma that it kept on repeating the words asserting it,
long after their original import had been totally forgotten.
The change from the time of Paul, whose
language and thought were moulded by the Mysteries,
impossibility,
*
5
Weimar,
Weimar,
g. by Gibbon and Nietzsche, quoted, Smith, Luther^ p. xii

of the Reformation, 710 f, 730 ff.
What is Christianity, p. 279.
^ E.
Age
^
xlvii. 474.
xlv. 96.
LUTHER
loi
or of Chrysostom with his "priest reddened with the

blood of the immolated Christ," to that of Aquinas and
I speak of the former because,
though he did not reject the dogma, the very light emphasis he put upon it shows that he had already outgrown it. Now Luther, like Wyclif, found in the mass
regarded as a good and propitiatory work, a cause of
Luther, was immense.
He
was the chosen instrument of

The masses which he saw
mumbled at Rome at the rate of seven an hour had in
them as little religion and as much greed as possible.
Like Wyclif, he therefore denounced them, and, as
with the Englishman, it was more the abusive practice
scandal.
saw that
it
ecclesiastical oppression.
than the theory that
moved
him, for while he varied
whether the mass should be called a sacrifice, he

never wearied of inveighing against it as a good work
and one repugnant to his sola fide.^
In the rejection of the transubstantiation Luther had
plenty of authority.
He himself mentions as sources
the Bohemians ^ and Peter d'Ailly.^^
The word was
not found in Scripture nor in the earlier doctors, and
In like
it was really the word that he objected to.
as to
manner he
disliked
the
German word
for
Trinity
(Dreifaltigkeit) though he heartily accepted the mystery. ^^
legend,
totle's
Regarding transubstantiation, he started the

repeated today," that it came from Arisschool.
This error contains a minute particle
still
Drews,
E. Kroker, p. 236.
77.
^'^ To
tf}e German Nobility, Weimar, vi. 456.
On the Bohemians
as a source for Luther's doctrine, W. Kohler: Luther und die Kirchengeschichte, 1900, p. 212.
^^ Babylonian Captivity, Weimar vi. 506.
^2
13
51.
Grisar, ii. 574.

H. B. Workman: Christian Thought
to
the Reformation, 1911, p.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
102
of truth; for the terminology of the schoolmen in this
was colored by
as in other things
their study of Aris-
but the substance of the doctrine
totle,
shown above, an
inevitable
The word
tive Christian realism.
itself,
was, as
development of the primitransubstantiation
sanctioned by the Lateran decree, was invented, said
by those coarse clowns the Thomists, and

should really be called "annihilation" of the bread and
wine into Christ's body.
Though it came from ArisLuther,
totle's school, says the
Reformer,
if
that philosopher
could see the reasoning of his disciples he would say:
"What
and fools to my
Don't the clowns know what I mean by substance, subject and predicate?"
And this stricture,
devil has led such gross asses
books?
continues Luther, pleased with his clever imitation of

the Stagyrite's style,
The
reasons
real presence after
ation of
its
would be
true.^*
why Luther should
mode
retain belief in the
having discarded the
official
explan-
are obscure only to those who, having
come themselves
to
consider
it
absurd,
fancy that
Luther must have been as modern as are they. The

first of these reasons was that he had the whole tradition of the church behind him, and he was very dependent on tradition.
He also had the plain words of the
Bible,
"this
is
explain away.
was
tion
itive
not, as
my
it
Christianity,
called.
body," which he could not easily
Though
in
most respects the Reforma-
claimed to be, the return to a primin
this
it
might speciously be so
In merely accepting the real presence while
refusing to speculate upon
its
mode, Luther was more
Pauline than either the Catholics with their philosophic

^^
Letter
xiii. 390.
to
Prince
George
of
Anhalt,
June
12,
1541,
Enders,
LUTHER
103
explanations, or the Zwinglians with their philosophic
He
doubts.
himself at one time shared the latter,

when, as he expressed it, he "felt the old Adam"
I freely confess [he wrote]i5 that if

Carlstadt or any other could
have convinced me
that there was nothing in the sacrament
but bread and wine, he would have done me a great
service.
I was
.
sorely tempted
on
and wrestled with myself and tried to

Isaw that I could thereby give the hardest
rap to the papacy. I read treatises by two menis who
wrote more
ably in defense of the theory than has Dr. Carlstadt and
who did not
so torture the word to their own imaginations.
But I am bound; I
believe that
it
was
this point
so, for
cannot believe as they do; the text is too strong for me

and will not
let itself be wrenched from the plain sense
by argument.
One powerful motive with Luther for not accepting

the symbolical interpretation of the words of consecration, was his jealousy of Carlstadt, who had been
the
first of the Wittenbergers to put it forward."
con-
temporary '^ is justified in expressing the suspicion tha-t

Luther would have held this opinion "had he not been
prevented [i.e. anticipated] by this Carolstadius,
whome the wicked arrogancy of his stomake could not
suffer to be auctour of so hye a heresye, whereof he
coveted him selfe to have been father." Indeed Luther
himself confesses, "Carlstadt's ranting only confirmed
me in the opposite opinion." '^
But it would be superficial to see in this external

motive the decisive cause of Luther's doctrine of the
real presence.
This, like most of his dogmas, was
15
Letter
to
Dec,
Strassburg,
p. 277.
16
Who
these were have

one, and perhaps Lucas
die Kirchengeschichte, 210.
was
yW.
Kohler:
"Zum
1524,
been much
Luther's
Correspondence,
disputed.
von Prag the
Perhaps Honius
other, Kohler: Luther
Abendmahlstreit
ii,
zwischen
Luther
und
und
Zwingli," Lutherstudien, 1917, p. 116.

1 Barlowe, Dialoge,
No paging.
1553.
19 Letter to
Strassburg, Dec, 1524, Luther's Correspondence,
ii,
277.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
104
deeply rooted
own
in his
as he often said,
Theology,
subjective need.
was for him not
a speculative but a
which was the then so
practical science, the object of
seemingly vital one of winning grace and of escaping

hell.
Luther approached
all
from the point
questions
What
of view of the sorely tried conscience.^"
he went through, not only
in the cloister
reason of dread of everlasting torture
Luther was
agonies
but later, by
it is
difficult
for
by it,^^ and
groaned in spirit, "Who shall deliver me from the
wrath to come?" At the same time, he undoubtedly
had a sufficiently disinterested moral sense to desire
goodness and God's favor for their own sake.
Now, considering Luther's training and deep reading in books which emphasized the importance of the
body and blood of Christ, it is not strange that he came
to believe that these and these alone could really bring
Christ into the heart of the believer, and make him
feel certain of being saved.
This was so overwhelmingly needful to him, that he made the real presence an
us to imagine.
article of the
fairly obsessed
standing or falling church."
Wlthoiit
something supernatural he could not persuade himself

that he was really on the right road.
With him "assurance of salvation must be based on miracle In order
to be certain; but this miracle
in the
must be one occurring

life, and must be
whole intellectual signifi-
inmost center of the personal
clearly
intelligible
cance.
in
The
done away with, and

of thought, that
its
sensuous
man
in its
in his sin
and confidently assent
sacramental
Graebke, 80; Grisar,
^'^
American Journal
22
Harnack, Dogmengesch.,
ii. 790.
of Psychology, 1913, July.
iii.
is
and weakness can grasp
to such a thought.
20
miracle
stead appears the miracle
889
ff.
That
is
the
LUTHER
105
end of priesthood and the hierarchy, the sacramental

"
communication of ethico-religious powers."
It is easy to deduce the consequences of this position.
Luther's posture remained that of the schoolman who
rejected a given theory, but could not transcend the
scholastic limitations
it
When
implied.^*
Zwingli he had to invoke one "sophism"

self called scholastic postulates
pushed by
as he him-
after another.
First
he borrowed from Scotus " the theory of the ubiquity

of Christ's body, and to justify that the commimicatio
idtomatum, or doctrine that the divine nature of Christ
communicated all its attributes to the human nature.^*'

In acknowledging that Christ's body was at the right
hand of God, while asserting that that hand was everywhere," Luther proved too much, and involved himself in a reductio ad absurdum^ for then, as was
promply ^rrnteid out, the body would be in every com-
mon
meal.
But
was not the only
intellectual confusion
By
Luther's position involved.

necessity of partaking of the
the
means
finally
evil that
on the
body and blood, he made
his insistence
more important than
He
the goal.^^
made the tyranny of dogma unbearable, but

he opened the door to the opus operatum, to formalism
not only
narrow and loveless orthodoxy, in short to all

those things which at other times he attacked so vigorously and successfully in the old church. ^^
and
to a
It
is
important to survey Luther's doctrine historic-
23 Troltsch, 192 f.
2* Scheel, "Abendmahl," in R.
25 Duns Scotus, lib. iv, dist.
same,
De
Well
2^
Weimar,
28 Troltsch,
xxiii. 143.
193.
Harnack, Dogmengesch,
iii.
i.
quaest.
eucharistia, p. 232.
set forth in a letter of Oct.
26
29
G. G.,
x,
889
ff.
i,
70
iii.
ff.
Wyclif had done the
1538, Enders, xii. 13
ff.
CHRISTIAN JHEOPHAGY
io6
observing
ally,
how
it
first
advanced and then, under
the influence of the polemic with Zwingli, retreated.
The whole
tendency of his earlier work
is
to
oppose
the Catholic theory of the automatic pouring in of
grace by the sacraments, and to
This
essential.
eucharist,^ of 151 8, in
the sacrament unity of hearts.
other sermon
Body of
true
On
make
faith the only
sermon on the
which he makes the "res" of
evident in his
is
the Venerable
first
In 15 19 he issued an-
Sacrament of the
holy,,
on
he makes the spiritual body of Christ the "res."
significance of the rite, which he compares to a
Christ,^^ in which, basing his doctrine
Biel,^^
The
contract given by one citizen to another, he finds in the
community of believers with Christ.

In 1520 he reaches the most advanced position he
ever attained.
In his Sermon on the New Testament,
^ that is on the Holy Mass,^^ he makes the "res" of the
action the Word of God, by which alone is granted
forgiveness of sins.
He lays great weight on the mass
\
as a "testament," defined as the irrevocable will by

which a man leaves his goods to others. To this will
the bread and wine are merely the seal and certification.
He wishes to reduce the mass to the form observed by Christ and the apostles.
In this work Luther distinctly implies that the actual participation in the
.
bread and wine are not necessary to secure their benefits.

"Believe and thou hast eaten," he repeats from
Augustine.
About
the
same time he attacked the doctrine of

In his Address to the German
transubstantiation.
^^
Sermo de digna praeparattone

Weimar, i. 325 ff.
cordis pro suscipiendo sacramento
eucharistiae,
^1
Weimar
^2
Graebke, 27 f.
Works, i. 294 ff.
3^
ii.
742
ff.
Weimar,
vi.353
ff.
LUTHER
Nobility he declares, "it
is
107
not an article of faith to
believe that natural bread and wine are not in thd
sacrament
which
is a delusion of Aquinas and of the

merely to believe that true and natural,
flesh and blood are in the bread and wine." ^*
In hisi
work on The Babylonian Captivity of the Church ^^
he comes as near defining his own theory of the mode
of Christ's presence as he ever does, though he states
but
pope
that
"^
not necessary to comprehend the modes of

But he speaks of d'Ailly's theory of
consubstantiation in a way that shows he is inclined to
it
is
divine action.
He
it.
also refers to Wyclif,
how much
hand.
of his
though
it
is
doubtful
work he could have known
at first
He
observes that Paul and the evangelists

always speak of the bread as bread, and that they also
speak not of the wine but of the cup, which could not
possibly be transubstantiated.
could not Christ's
Why
body be contained within the substance of the bread,

he asks, as well as in the accidents?
Borrowing from
Augustine one of the stock similes of the fathers, he
compares the mode of the presence to that of fire in
red-hot iron.^"
Here, too, he emphasizes his belief
that the essence of the sacrament is the word
of God.
Two years later, when he had begun to feel pressure
from Carlstadt, he consistently took the position that
one should not investigate the mode of divine

operation.
Don't confuse the people with these hair-splittings, he writes Speratus, nor ask
whether Christ
is
present with "blood, humanity, divinity,

hair, bone,
and
skin."
After
"
this
time Luther's conception of the benefits
^*
Weimar,
vi. 456.
^^
Weimar
vi.
^^
Weimar,
xi.
37
June
13,
506 ff.
487 f.
1524, Enders,
iii.
397.
Luther's Correspondence,
ii,
127.
'
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
io8
and nature of the sacrament became more and more

In 1523 the body and blood were consid-
material.
ered the object of the ministering word, along with

forgiveness.
Two years later they were made the
vehicles of forgiveness, and soon afterwards they were
stated to be, along with forgiveness, of the "res" of
the sacrament.^^
In his Confession on Christ's Supper
(1528), Luther wrote:

of divinity,
full
and who takes
"The
of eternal good,
flesh
life,
of Christ
is
full
and blessedness,
a bit of the flesh takes with
it
to himself
and blessedness and all that is in

the flesh." ^^
From this it was but a step to the making, in 1529, the body and blood the exclusive "res,"
and calling forgiveness a mere effect. The body and
eternal good,
life,
Word as the vehicle

of forgiveness and forgiveness as the "res" of the
blood thus completely expelled the
was not all. As Luther grew

older and the fear of death became more present to
him, the sacrament appeared to him more and more in
sacrament.*"
But
this
the light of the "medicine of immortality."
In his
sermons of 1537 and 1538, he places the main function of the bread and wine in their power to destroy
death and assure immortality.*^
Luther's controversy with the Catholics on the sacrament was on three points besides the doctrines of
transubstantiation.
i. The denial that the mass was
2. The denial that confession was absoa good work.
lutely necessary as a preliminary to communion.
3.
The
38
giving of the cup to the
Graebke,
laity.
80.
^Îbid., 64.
^'^
Ibid.,
however,
41
ibid.,
Sermon
436
ff.
Thus in his polemics. In the Catechism of

find a partial return to the more spiritual view.
of Oct. 29, 1537, Buchwald, 186 ff; or July 28,
81.
we
1529,
1538,
LUTHER
In 15 1 8 Luther
in the
still
considered the mass a sacrifice

In the following year, how-
Catholic sense. *^
ever, he protested,
In
109
the Interest of his sola fide,
was
against the theory that the mass

unless accompanied by faith
and
love.
good work
Instead of an
opus operatum he stated that it should be an opus

operantis.^^
At the same time he expressed the wish
that a council might grant communion In both kinds to
the laity.**
Far stronger Is his Sermon on the New Testament

There he considers that the worst abuse
More idolatry is
of the mass is to call It a sacrifice.
caused by it, he thinks, than was^ found among the Jews.
He reprobates private masses, the offertory, and the
of 1520.*^
idea that the elevation of the host
of offering
to
it
certain sense,
offering, if
to
God.
for the purpose
God, rather than for our sake.
indeed, the service
by that
He
is
is
meant that
in
In a
may be called an
It we offer ourselves
denies explicitly that masses are a benefit
and proposes that foundations

This Is also forcibly recto
the German Nobility.*^
Address
ommended in the
In The Babylonian Captivity he presents a similar position as to the sacrifice and good work, and demands
that mass be celebrated in the vulgar tongue.*^
The Catholics were not slow In taking up the gauntMurner wrote to show that the mass was a sacrilet.
The bull
for living and dead.*^
efficacious
fice,
to souls In purgatory,
for masses be abolished.
42 In a sermon printed,
43 Weimar, ii. 751.
^*Ibid., 742.
45
4^
4'^
Weimar,
Weimar,
Weimar,
48 Janssen,
vi.
353
ff.
vi, 451.
vi.
ii.
510,
168.
516.
Weimar,
i.
433
ff.
no
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
Exsurge Domine,
condemned the procommunion in both

kinds.
To this Luther replied that the bull had simply condemned Paul, that Christ had commanded all
in
article
i6,
posal that a council should ordain
to drink of the cup,
man
and that
if
a council delayed, every
should take the matter into his
own hands/^
Another famous refutation of Luther is the Assert'lo Septem Sacramentorum, written,

at the suggestion
of More and Wolsey, and with much help from More,
Fisher and others, by Henry VIII, thence called Defender of the Faith.'
Captivity,
mass.
it
As
a rebuttal of the
Babylonian
takes up in course Luther's doctrine of the
The
logic is extraordinary.
In proving that
not only, as Luther calls it, a testament or
promise, the author shows that it is a good work, that
when Christ instituted the Supper he made his own
the
mass
is
and blood of bread and wine, and that the priest

now does the same. This is a work, exactly as when a
carpenter makes an image of wood he does a work.
But what Christ does is good; consequently the mass
is a good work.
If Luther objects to the word "transubstantiation," Henry says nobody will trouble him to
flesh
believe that
if
only he will believe that the whole subis converted into the whole sub-
stance of the bread
*9 Grund und
Ursach aller Artikel D. M. Luthers so durch
romische Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind, 1521, V^êimar, vi. 390.
50 Published by O'Donovan.
See English Historical Revieiv, 1910,
The Babylonian Captivity was spoken of by Tunpp. 656 ff.
stall in a letter to Wolsey, Jan. 21, 1521, Luther's Correspondence,
i. 455
ff; Henry was writing his refutation in April, ibid., 520, and
Calender of Carew MSS, 1867, no. 13. In 1534 Henry charged that
More "by subtle sinister slights procured and provoked him to set
forth a book of the Assertion of the Seven Sacraments."
Bridgett:
More, p. 221. More denied authorship but confessed that he had
helped Henry, Life by Roper, in G. Samson's edition of the Utopia,
1910, p. 247.
Cf. also More's letter to Cromwell, Feb. or March,
1533, JVorkes, 1557, p. 1526.
LUTHER
III
stance of the body, and the whole substance of the

How,
wine into the whole substance of the blood.
asks the king, can the heretic pretend to rely wholly
on Scripture, when he finds in it no authority for
mingling water with the wine, "for," says he, "I imagine he will not be so bold as to omit this custom."
Luther replied, and the battle continued to be waged

with great ferocity for some years, but, as
it
hardly
developed any new light on the question it need not be

further followed here.
Quite naturally the Catholics made the most of Luther's utraquism, hateful to Germans because of the
Aleander's
Hussite wars, at the Diet of Worms.
speech before the estates, on February 13, 1521,^^
especially
emphasized
this.
Luther, after his appear-
ance at the Diet, had a long argument on this point
and on transubstantiation, with Cochlaeus. The CathThe Wit-\

olic justified his tenets by quoting Ambrose.
tenberg professor admitted that Ambrose had spoken
of a change in the elements, but denied that this was
'^
Cochlaeus illustrated the possibility of the bread being the body by comparing it with
the dogma, incomprehensible to reason but firmly held
by faith, of the double nature of the God-man, by
which divinity was humanity. Luther here drew a fine
distinction; abstract qualities, like divinity and humantransubstantiation.
ity,
or "breadhood and bodyhood," might be equated,
even
if
things,
rationally incommensurable, but not concrete

like
"bread" and "body."
Cochlaeus main-
tained that the copula had the same force whether
it
united abstract or concrete terms, and that the pro51
109,
Forstemann: Nciies Urkundenbuch, 1842, i. 30 ff.

with misprint "February 18" for "February 13."
Smith, Luther;
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
112
osltion about the divinity of Christ
far as reason
"horse
is
While
was on a par,
was concerned, with such equations
ass," "white
at the
is
black," "Cochlaeus
Wartburg Luther wrote On
is
as
as,
table."
"^
Abuse
the
After laying down his principle that

of the Mass.^^
only Scripture is authoritative, and not the usage of the
church or the decisions of the pope or of the universities
of Paris and Louvain, "with their dear sisters
Sodom and Gomorrah," he
subjects the ecclesiastical
Main-
idea of a priesthood to a withering criticism.

taining, as he
bility,
had
Address
in the
the priesthood of
to the
he
all believers,
German Nocries,
"Come,
noble parsons, show by one single point or line

the
why you
Gospels or Epistles
priests before other Christian
part of the
work he examines
the Last Supper in the
first
in all
should be called
men."
In the second
carefully the accounts of
three Gospels and in
Corinthians and shows that the bread and wine were
never called a
He who
sacrifice.
does so
the curse of Scripture against those
under
falls
who add
to the
words of that book.
The
period,
preface to this work, and letters of the same
show
that Luther
was pleased with the
taken at Wittenberg,
in their earlier stages,
abolish private masses
^*
munion
service. ^^
and
both to
to institute a simple
When, however,
in a
steps
manner
compres-
Luther saw that the reforms at

Wittenberg went considerably beyond his own views,
ently to be described,
52 All this rests on a letter from Cochlaeus to "George" dated

June 12, 1521, and first published in 1540. J. Kiihn: Luther und der
JVormser Reichstag. Leipzig n. d. pp. 95 ff.
53
In Latin,
To
55 To
5*
Weimar,
Spalatin, Oct.
viii.
7,
411
ff;
in
1521, Enders,
Melanchthon, August
Correspondence, ii. 49 f.
1,
1521,
German,
iii.
ibid.,
482
ff.
236.
Enders,
iii.
205
ff.
Luther's
LUTHER
113
he was both alarmed at the outbreak of independent

and subjective reHgion and nettled that others seemed
to be wresting the leadership from him.
Returning,
from the Wartburg in March, 1522, he

communion service started by Carlstadt
and Melanchthon, and reintroduced the mass with
therefore,
abolished the
almost
to the
the old forms.
As Carlstadt had objected

word "mass," Luther said he would use it for
all
that very reason.

Forgetting the anathemas he had
launched against those who added to Scripture by
callmg the host a sacrifice, he says that now, "to spite the
mob-spirits," he will "dub the sacrament anew a
sacrifice, not that I hold it for a sacrifice,
but that the devil,
who
is
In like
god of
manner he
the
this mob-spirit,
may beware
of me."
reinstated the elevation of the host,

remarking that both the command to elevate, by the
pope, and the prohibition to do so, by Carlstadt, were

infringements of Christian liberty.^''
He was in a sad
dilemma, for he wished to give it up to "go against the
papists,"
and
to retain
devil."
He
finally
more important
nor
it
"to go against and annoy the
decided that the latter was the
duty, for, says he, "I
would not
then,
now, allow the devil to teach me anything

church."
He even says that if necessary he will
will I
m my
have the host elevated three, seven or ten times."

He
also defended the use of Latin in the
service by a
questionable reference to i Cor. xiv. 26 ff.^^
In the service as restored by him the words
of the
canon of the mass importing sacrifice were
omitted.
Private masses were also suppressed.
Communion
56 Barge, ii. 270.
llSJort Confession of 1545, Erlangen, xxxii, 420, 422.
5Grisar, ii. 330.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
114
was administered
in
one or both kinds according to the

The bread, however,
preference of the recipient. ^^
was put
priest,
the layman's mouth, as by the
in
not
in his
hand, as by
At
Carlstadt.*''^
Luther laid down the principle that
in
Cathohc
this
time
the matter of
utraquism charity was the supreme law, and that one

should not argue whether
it is
against the pope or not,
but only whether Christians have a right to communi-
But two years later he wrote

anyone was persuaded that communion under
both kinds was commanded by Christ, he would better
take it that way or not at all.^^
In later years he became more insistent that, even at the risk of persecution, lay Christians should insist on receiving the cup.*^^
When Luther came to think out the application of
his principles to liturgies, he produced a work on the
subject called The Formula of Mass and Communion^^
In this he confesses to great conservatism on account
of weaker brethren.
Nothing should be changed excate as they please.*'^
that
if
cept
what was counter
left
the introitus, the
to the Bible.
He
Kyrie eleison, the
graduale, the use of candles and incense
if
accordingly
collects,
the
desired,
and
the usual closing benedictions and prayers.
moved
He
re-
those prayers and that part of the canon, the
importing a
offertory,
sacrifice,
and he altered the
words of institution to agree more closely with the

59
Kostlin-Kawerau,
^ Ibid.,
illustrated
i.
511.
Mr, George Plimpton of

Lutheran Catechism, showing the
505
f.
New York
has an early
priest putting the
wafer
into the communicant's mouth.

^1
On Taking
pp. II
^2
63
Communion
in
both Kinds,
Weimar,
To Spalatin, April 4, 1524, Enders, iv. 316.

To Barbara Liskirchen, 1535, Enders, x. 136;
Enders,
6*
the
x.,
part
ii,
ff.
ix.
300;
Weimar,
cf.
xii,
to
also Enders, ix. 40, 181, 221, 290.
205
flP.
G. Curio, 1533,
LUTHER
gospel.
The self-communion
of the priest was
lowed, as well as vestments and
though
all rites
al-
not expressly
Auricular confession was not
prohibited by Scripture.
to be required,
115
it
was considered
useful, as a
preparation for the sacrament, but any notorious offender was to be excluded from the altar.
ion
was
Commun-
to be administered in both kinds, as sufficient
indulgence had already been shown
weak
consciences
in that matter.
On
October
by Luther
19, 1525, the service
in German.''^
The
was
first
celebrated
following year, under
name German Mass, he published an order of

divine service not unlike that now in use in Protestant
the
churches.*'*'
The polemic
Masses for
against
the
Catholics
continued.
were abolished at Wittenberg, and

In
the income for them applied to the university.**^
1524 Luther wrote a work surpassing all previous ones
in violence, The Abomination of the Private Mass,
called the Canonf'^ He said that celebrating the mass
was worse than cursing God on the streets. He was
even inclined to see in it one chief cause for what he
regarded as an unmitigated evil, the peasants' revolt,^
Naturally, when the Reformation was introduced into
Hesse, in 1526, the canon of the mass and all words
implying that it was a sacrifice were suppressed.^*'
Many Catholics answered Luther, among the first
^^
at
souls
"On October
Wittenberg
in
they first began to sing the German Mass

presence." Collectanea von Gerard Gelden-
19, 1525,
my
haiier, ed. Prinsen, 1901, p. 80.

7
ii,
Smith, Luther, p. 230. Weimar, xix. 70 ff.

Enders, -v*. 10 f, Smith, Luther, 184, 220. Luther's Correspondence,
247 fF; also 154 f, 160, 173 f, 192, 207 f, 260 ff.
^8 Weimar, xviii. 22 ff.
^^ Erlangen, xxvi. i ff.
^^
TOKidd, 224.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
ii6
Jerome Emser/^ John Eck, in a work entitled Answer

to Luther's Abomination against the holy Private
Mass, found it, according to a modern Catholic writer,
"almost superfluous to prove how untenable were
Cochlaeus made a more
Luther's assumptions." "
serious effort to rebut the heretic from Scripture,
though practically all he could say was that the Bible
never denied that the mass was a sacrifice and a good
work, and never called it sin or idolatry.
Cochlaeus's
wrath was moved by the "wretched German mass with
barbarous rites and falsified or abridged canon," predicting that there would soon be as many diverse
masses as there were individuals."
Earnest efforts were made to reconcile Catholics and
Lutherans
Diet of Augsburg, 1530. So anxious

was Melanchthon to attain this end that he called God
at the
would sacrifice union with the Zwinglians

Jonas and others drew up a memorial on
private masses in terms as conciliatory as possible. ^^
Another memorial of the Saxon theologians on the
The real
eucharist was phrased in Catholic terms.
to witness he
to
it.^*
presence was strongly affirmed, as was the use of the
sacrament
in
unto eternal
The
preserving the body and soul of believers

life.^^
original
form of the Augsburg Confession, read
before the Diet on June 25,

lost."
^1
We
Defence
of the Mass,
^2
1530,
know, however, that
it
is
unfortunately
was couched
in
Mass of Christians against Luther's Formula

G. Kawerau: H. Emser, 1898, p. 44.
the
of
1524.
In 1525; Grisar, ii. 807.

Cochlaeus, art. 366.
'
Schirrmacher, 247.
^Îbid., 136 ff.
"^Îbid., 112 ff.
^^ Ficker speaks of a copy of the original, handed to Eck, then sent
to Trent, and now rediscovered, in his article in Geschichtliche
Studien A. Hauck dargebracht, 1915.
^3
'^*
LUTHER
117
Even after Luther had

Melanchthon altered the wording to make It more acceptable to Catholics.
That
Article 13, on the eucharist, was substantially Catholic
may be safely Inferred from the fact that the Catholic
Refutation found not one objection to make to It.^*
As published In 1531 the Confession, though probably
stiffened, is mild enough.
It disclaims as a calumny
the charge that the Lutherans do not celebrate mass;
on the contrary all the old ceremonies are said to be
kept except that some German is added to Instruct the
extremely conciliatory terms.
seen and approved
It,
people, according to Paul's precept.
Communion
in:
however, demanded, and the abuse of the

private mass as a good work, denounced."
It really appeared that this last point was the only
one left In debate, and even on this harmony at one
both kinds
Is,
time seemed possible.
wrote
The
Catholic protagonist, Eck,
"Let not a verbal contention arise over the

and 'sacrifice'
for
in the Old Testament Christ was offered in the paschal lamb figuratively or typically; on the cross in his
passion (passlbiliter) when he offered himself to the
Father for our sins; and daily In the mass Is he offered
mystically and representatively In memory of his passion and oblation once made on the cross.
Thus thej
mass Is not a bloody victim but a mystic and represenIt was accordingly agreed by the Prottative one." ^^
estants to call the mass a sacrifice if the word were
qualified with the term 'commemorative," in return for
which the Catholics conceded communion in both kinds
words
'offering,' 'victim,'
''^
R. G. G., i. 74; Harnack: Dogmengeschichte, Hi. 670, note 3;
Smith, Luther, 257. Smith, The Age of Reformation, p. 117.
79Kidd, 271 ff.
^ Articulus de missa, August 21, 1530, Kidd, 296.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
ii8
provided
it
were taught that
this
was
matter of
convenience rather than of principle.^

It then seemed that the private mass was the only
bone of contention left. On this both parties were
obstinate, for it touched the most fundamental of all
differences between them, that expressed in the doctrine
Luther defined the
of justification by faith only.
of
difficulty
agreement in these words: "Campeggio
said that before he would let the mass be taken from
him he would let himself be broken on the wheel; I
said that before I would defend that mass, I would
^^
let myself be burned to ashes, and more."
The year after the Diet of Augsburg Cardinal Cajetan published one of the most influential of all the
Catholic apologies for the sacrifice of the mass.^
He
proved
19,
primarily by citing the words (Luke
it
xxii.
"Hoc facite in meam commemora24 f )

tionem," and emphasizing the word "facite."
Christ
I
Cor.
xi.
does not say, "dicite," but, "facite," "do," or "make

this," and what he wishes to make in his body by immolation ("facere corpus Christi immolando seu per
modum
This sacrifice does not impair the unique value of the death on the cross.
On the other side Luther came out with a treatise
on Private Masses and Parsons' Ordination.^* It is
couched
immolationis.")
in the
method chosen,
81
form of
a dialogue with the devil, a
as he explains to a friend, in order to
Smith, Luther, 261.
82 Smith and
the same thought in Lauterbachs
Gallinger, 143
Tagebuch auf des Jahr 1538, p. 24, and in the Schmalaldic Articles,
Weimar, vol. 50, p. 204.
83 Card. Cajetani Adversus tuiheranos juxta Scripturam tractaius.
De sacraficio missae. De commtinione. Coloniae. 1531. Analysed by
;
Lauchert, 162
8*
Weimar,
ff.
xxxviii. 171
ff.
LUTHER
bring
home
tion,
when,
119
horror of their posiof death, they will them-
to the papists the full

at the
moment
answer the accusations of the Adversary.^^

The realism of the picture is, however, extraordinary; Luther describes how, on the appearance of
Satan, his heart stopped beating, sweat broke out on
his brow, and he understood how men had been found
dead in their beds. Supported as this passage is by
selves unable to
numerous sayings
in the table talk describing
tions with the devil,
former
The
it
conversa-
cannot be doubted that the Re-
objectified his foe in a very literal manner.^*'
substance of the
work
is
the most complete repud-
Luther ever attained.

Luther frequently reckoned the
mass the greatest impiety,^ or said that he would
rather be a whoremonger and thief than have blasphemed Christ with masses for fifteen years. ^^ The
iation of the Catholic position
As time went
on,
Schmalkaldic articles of 1537 stated that the mass, considered as a good work, was a horror and ought to be
abolished, together with
all
endowments for the same.^^
"This dragon's tail, the mass, has begotten on everyAt a

thing much vermin and many maggots."
debate held at Wittenberg an January, 1536, it
was argued that if, as Paul said, i Cor. xv. 29,
the sacrament of baptism might be celebrated for
the dead, the sacrament of the eucharist might
^'^
Luther could only reply to this

be so used also.
by a well-meaning, but mistaken, exegesis of the
Paul did not speak, said he, of
verse in question.
85
To Hausmann,
^^
American Journal
17, 1533, Enders ix. 363.

of Psychology, July, 1913, pp. 3^5
87 Smith and Gallinger, 145.
88 Erlangen, Ix. 106.
Dec.
89
Smith, Luther, 307.
90
Weimar,
50,
200
ff,
204.
ff-
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
120
baptism for the dead, but over {virip) the dead, and he
explained this by alleging that it was the ancient custom, in order to symbolize the life-giving powers of
baptism, to hold the infant over a corpse while applying
the holy water to
him
^^
!
On December 5, 1538, Luther said: "I very much

doubt whether the sacrament is in the private mass, for
in it the commandment of God is unheeded, and they
change the sacrament into a sacrifice. They celebrate
no communion^ but keep a solitary silence. The priest
celebrates it alone, which is against the meaning of the
word communion. I, however, do not wish to condemn their comprehensive and ancient abuse. If the
papists do it, let them defend it and answer for it.
We do not wish to be in their danger." ^
But in regard to calling the mass a sacrifice and
In
adoring the host, Luther was far from consistent.
1536 he expressly conceded that, if publicly and rightly
done, the eucharist was a sacrifice. ^^ Even in a Ro-
manist church, he said, at a public mass he would adore

In his Theses against Lotivain, December,
the host.^*
1544, he expressly admitted that the sacrament of the

altar should be adored.^^ Perhaps his general position
is
best expressed in a letter of 1538,^ saying that the
eucharist
was not primarily
instituted for adoration, but
could properly be adored as the Saviour's person.
While Luther himself continued
to
grow more
91
Drews,
^^
Lauterbach's Tagehuch auf das Jahr 153^, hg. von
88.
mann, 1872, p. 187.

^3 Drews, 76.
9* Smith and Gallinger,
95
9fi
reac-
35.
Thesis 16, quoted Kostlin-Kawerau, ii. 610.

To Francis von Rhewa, Enders, xii. 13 ff.
J.
K. Seide-
LUTHER
121
tlonary, the polemic against the CathoHcs, carried on
by the younger strength of Melanchthon and Calvin,

grew less and less conciliatory. The form of the
Augsburg Confession
issued by
Melanchthon
in
1540,
known as the Variata, reflects the shift of his opinion

away from the Catholic to the Zwinglian side. At the
same time a memorial drawn up by the Wittenbergers,
while denying that the mass was a meritorious work or
an opus operatum, disclaimed on the other hand the
it was a mere rehearsal, like the play
proposition that
of the death of Caesar,^^
The attempt
Ratisbon
in
to
reconcile
1541 achieved
less
the
two confessions
at
than the similar attempt
Augsburg eleven years earlier. The conference

was wrecked on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Calvin and Melanchthon, with their fellow Protestants
at
who were
present, denied not only transubstantiation,
but any true change in the elements whatever.
They
body was present only to communicants

and that veneration of the host was idolatrous. In|
both these positions they were at variance with Luther
no less than with the pope. The legate Contarini was'
astonished at these novel heresies, which he had not!
found in the Confession or Apology of 1530. He|
proposed that if the Protestants would allow transub-l
stantiation, the Catholics should abstain from veneration of the host, but his opponents refused this comsaid that the
promise.^*
^^
9s
i.
Enders, xii. 351 ff.

Pastor-Kerr, xi. 444 f; Kidd, 343;
261.
Calvin
to
Farel,
Gilchrist,
VI.
CARLSTADT
During Luther's year
at the
Wartburg
ship of the reform
movement
Andrew Bodenstein
of Carlstadt, a
the leader-
at Wittenberg fell to
man
of good
in-
tentions
and
clear brain, offset by a certain flightiness.
In his earlier writings on the sacrament he agreed substantially with Luther, especially in his repudiation of
the
sacrifice
of the mass as a
"masterpiece of the
In the Old Testament, said he, no ox nor
devil."
other animal was ever slaughtered more than once, and
more than
however, made the
therefore Christ could not be immolated

once.
The
intention to
do
so,
and robbers turning

den of blood.
Like Luther, Carlstadt emphasized faith as the all
important element in the sacrament.
In particular he
thought of the bread as the sign of resurrection and
the blood as the sign of forgiveness.
In 1521 he still
priests his murderers, Pharisees,
the house of
God
into a
believed in the real presence.
In June of this year, however, after returning from

trip to Denmark, he began thoroughly to purge
Wittenberg of the old leaven of Roman doctrine. In

this he was ably seconded by Gabriel Zwilling, an Augustinian friar, and by Philip Melanchthon.
Their
reforms, which included an attack on sacerdotal celibacy, and important measures, cannot be here described
save as they affect the
1
Barge,
ii.
85
ff.
communion
service.
CARLSTADT
was
It
Zwilling
apparently
123
who
assailed
first
mass, and with such vigor that he was dubbed
the
He declared
hearers a second Luther.
for no sin
mass,
another
hear
never
would
he
that
by
his
could
make God
The
angrier.
sin consisted partly in
mass a sacrifice, partly in adoring the host.

was a mere sign, to adore it would be
both idolatry and as foolish as it would have been for
the Jews to adore the rainbow or circumcision, both
Communion under both
signs of a divine covenant.
kinds was introduced.
On September 29 in the Parish
Church, Melanchthon, a layman, and his pupils, recalling the
As
the bread
ceived the sacramental cup."
As
nearly as possible
was restored to primitive custom, the priest

In this Melanchthon
reciting the words of the gospel.
believed he was following the line laid down by Luththe service
er.^
On
October 13, masses ceased to be celebrated in the

Augustinian friary, and in their place a preaching service was held by Zwilling.
On that day, for two hours
in the morning and for another hour in the afternoon,
he denounced the abuse of the mass so forcibly that his
numerous audience was astonished. Four days later a
learned debate on the subject was held under the presidency of Carlstadt.*
On
October 20 Jonas, Carlstadt, Melanchthon and

others drew up a memorial to justify their opinions to
They
the Elector Frederic.
to
Ulscenius to Capito, Oct.
6,
had abolthem to the
stated that they
ished private masses because Paul forbade
1521, A. R. G., vi. 174
f.
Helmann
John Hess, Oct. 8, ibid., 175 ff; Luther's Correspondence, ii. 59 f.

-'Melanchthon to Link, Oct. 9, A. R. G., 181 ff Luther's Corres;
pondence,
*Burer
ii,
to
60
f.
Beatus Rhenanus, Oct.
ii,
62
f.
19,
1521,
A. R. G.,
vi.
192
ff;
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
124
Corinthians
{cf.
Cor.
xi.
21, to
IZlov Sei-Ti-vov)
cause the essence of the sacrament

fellowship.
Christ,
said they,
is
and be-
comrnunion,
i.e.
gave the cup to the
Private masses they called the greatest sin on
laity.
earth, impossible to be applied for the souls of others
any more than one man can be baptized for another.

The Elector was begged to abolish the superstitious
foundations by which impure priests make money by
saving mass.^
On November i the parish priest of Wittenberg

gave the sacrament in both kinds to all the people,
young and old.^ On the same day the provost (Justus
Jonas) preached against masses for souls with "mocking, sharp words," saying that he would give all his
goods to abolish such foundations.^
upon such good ground that on
December 3 the people armed with knives and stones
drove away priests celebrating mass from the parish
church.
On the following day the students destroyed
an altar in a Franciscan convent.
This was too much
All this seed
fell
for the Elector Frederic,
allowing the disturbance.
who rebuked
his officers for
worse riot followed on

the arrest of the offenders, for on December 12 the
people went to the officers and demanded their release.^
Luther also disapproved of such methods, and made
a short and secret visit to Wittenberg early in December.
He did nothing, however, save interview a few
friends.
bitter struggle
now
and the conservatives.

^
6
^
set in
The
between the innovators

appealed to the
latter
A. R. G., vi. 195 ff; Kidd, 97 S.

Barge, ii. 547.
Barge, ii. 548.
Smith, Luther, 136; A. R. G., vi. 270.
CARLSTADT
125
him not to hurry his reforms, and to

what Luther thought of them.^ In reply the
Elector, begging
find out
reformers pointed out that even
if
the law supported
the old constitution, yet religion forbade the howling
of masses night and day.^
On
Christmas day Carlstadt celebrated an evangelic

communion service more radical than anything prev-
He
announced that confession would not be rewould preparatory fasting. He even allowed men who had been drinking brandy to communicate, and, so the Catholics stated, to carry the bread
home to their wives. ^^ Instead of putting the bread
in the mouths of the communicants, as usual, he allowed
them to take it in their hands, by which some of it fell
on the floor. All of this was a terrible scandal to the
ious.
quired, nor
Catholics. ^^
Early
in
April Carlstadt proposed that instead
of "mass" the service should be called
Supper."
^^
Among
"The Lord's
other reforms introduced by him
or his friends was that of giving communion to
chil-
dren, according to the most ancient custom.^*
The
easiness
innovations of the Wittenbergers caused un-
among
the Catholics of neighboring lands.
On
January 20, 1522, the Imperial Council of Regency at

Nuremberg passed a mandate forbidding the celebration of mass in new ways, without the regular ceremonies or dress. It also forbade, pending the deciJ. Dolsch to Elector Frederic, Dec. 13,
10 Carlstadt, Melanchthon and others to
9
A. R. G.,
vi.
295.
C. Beyer, Dec. 12, ibid.,
279.
11
Said of Zwilling, Jan.
12,
1522.
Clemen, 1907, p. 11.

^-A. R. G., vi. 387. Barge, ii. 616.
13 Barge, ii. 563.
1* Barge, AktenstUke, 4, note.
George Helts Briefivechsel,
ed.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
126
slon of a council, utraquism
and the communion of
children/^
Though he was
not influenced by this
'Luther, on his return to Wittenberg,
March
decree,
1522,
he had been sent to execute it.
He immediately suppressed all the reforms instituted by
acted as
6,
if
and soon made the town too hot to hold those

not, like Melanchthon, instantly come to
heel.
Carlstadt migrated to Orlamunde, as parish
priest, and here he wrote a series of pamphlets propounding the theory that the bread and wine were
merely symbols, and not, in any real sense, the body
and blood of Jesus. One of these tracts was completed in the latter part of 1523; the other four were
all composed in the months August to October, 1524.^^
In forming his opinion it cannot be said whether
Carlstadt was influenced by Honius, whose first treatise ,
had been brought to Wittenberg by Hinne Rode, or
others,
who would
It is quite likely that
not.
self,
he evolved the idea him-
aware of the contradiction between the doctrine
of the supreme importance of faith, and one which yet
much
on the outward signs. At any rate

On the Priesthood and Sacrifice of
Christy was a direct answer to Luther's Adoration of
the Sacrament,, which is a defence of the real presence
against the Bohemians.
Carlstadt wrote that he was
compelled "by the inner witness of the spirit" and "the
put so
his first
stress
pamphlet,
clear word of the Bible," to believe that the bread and

wine were mere memorials.
The real presence, he
thought, stood in contradiction to the doctrine of the
universal priesthood, or else

15
*^
Barge, Aktenstuke,
Barge, ii. 151.
ff.
we must assume
that all
CARLSTADT
127
Christians have the power to transmute the elements,

and thereby place all believers "by the side of Christ,
to be, with him, mediators of the
On August
22,
New
Covenant."
'^
1524, Luther and Carlstadt had a
friendly conference at Jena.
The Wittenberger gave
his colleague permission to attack his opinions
and
gold gulden as a pledge of tolerance.'^

It was doubtless in response to this invitation that Carlstadt composed the four other pamphlets setting forth his views
on the sacrament.
His argument is nothing if not thorough. He first

proves that Christ could not be in the bread, by Paul's
words (i Cor. ii, 2) "I know nothing among you save
Christ and him crucified."
His body therefore could

on the cross.
He calls
it foolish to seek forgiveness of sins in mere signs. ^
In exegesis of "This is my body," he said Christ pointed to his own body, and this he proved by alleging that
in Greek "this," touto, could not agree, being neuter,
have been nowhere
else save
''^
with "bread," apro?, being masculine, but must agree

with the neuter "body," a^/xa.-^
Calling Luther "the
Antichrist's [pope's]
younger friend," he asserts that

he has the witness of the "Spirit" which Christ promised."
Luther's answer to this was pat: "My devil, I
know you
well!"
-^
Continuing his argument, Carlstadt says that the
words about breaking the bread
as the
communion of
*^Jannsen,20 ii. 450.

18 Smith, Luther,
154.
19 Barge, ii.
153.
^Îbid., IS7.
'^^ Ibid.,
159 f, 170. A similar argument has been used three hundred years before by Moneta of Cremona.
22 Barge, ii. 161.
23 Grisar,
ii.
326.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
128
the
body of Christ
Cor.
(i
eucharist but to all bread.
x.
i6 f) refer not to the
Those who
interpret "cup"
here for "wine," continens pro contento, "do it out of

their own heads, leaving Christ's clear words. "^*
Further, he proved that "this" referred to "body"
by the words "broken for you," which meant, broken
on the
cross.
Nor
because Paul says
could Christ be
"till
he come,"
in the
i
Cor.
bread now,
xi.
26.
If
Christ had indeed referred to the wine as his blood he
must have consecrated it in the bellies of his disciples

as he spoke the words of institution after they had
drunk (Mark xlv. 23-4). Finally, Christ said "this
is
my
body," not "in
this
tainers of the real presence
is
my
body," as the main-
make him
say.^^
Immediately after finishing the pamphlets Carlstadt

Saxony and wandered to South Germany and
Switzerland.
His work, thus industriously disseminated, had considerable influence.
At Strassburg he
saw Capito and Bucer. The former wrote, as early as
October, 1524, a tract headed, fVhat to think of the
Schism between Luther and Carlstadt.
He tried to
minimize the difference, comparing it to that once existent between Paul and Barnabas.
One should not
honor Luther more than God, and as all are agreed in
left
reprobating the sacrifice of the mass,
it is silly,
said he,
inquire further.^
On the other hand Nicholas
Gerbel wrote Luther on November 22, 1524, from
Strassburg, that no Faber, Eck, or Emser had hurt him
to
as
much as had Carlstadt.

The Strassburgers were
2*
25
26
Barge,
Barge,
Barge,
ii.
ii.
ii.
162
164
214
f.
f.
f.
in
general for Luther; Ger-
CARLSTADT
1.29
for instance, writing Melanchthon that Carlstadt

had brought unnumbered multitudes into hell fire."
At Augsburg Michael Keller (Cellarius) took Carlbel,
Urban Rhegius wrote against him,

fact that now the laity, even drunken
stadt's part, while
deploring the
sausage makers and crazy old
Popular
ment.^^
of Protestant
interest
women
was
Germany took
discuss the sacra-
The whole
intense.
sides almost at once,
and
the controversy thus started lasted for over a century.
At Nuremberg, Lazarus Spengler

stadt's opinion
was
to be rejected as
reason, not on the Bible.
was forbidden and
The
said that Carlit
rested only on
printing of his books
legal action instituted against his
This revealed more than had been anticipated, for on examination the well known painters
followers.
Sebald
Beham and
his
brother Barthel and George
Pentz, confessed that they could not believe various

Christian dogmas.
How
far they were led to take
by the religious controversies of the age
this position
would be most
instructive to learn.^^
At Nordlingen,
Billican
wrote
his
Renovatio
clesiae Nordlingiacensis against Carlstadt
tried to
make
1525)
ec-
He
the difference between Luther and Carl-
stadt as wide as possible, but misunderstood his master,
blamed Carlstadt for saying that the sacrament

forgave sins.
This was exactly Luther's position. Billican was inclined to call the sacrament a mere memorial, though he illogically maintained the real presence.
But when, in February, 1525, Carlstadt met
for he
Billican he
27
Barge,
ii.
almost converted him.
The Nordlinger
226, 228.
^^ Ibid., 233.
^^ Ibid., 242 f;
Smith:
Age
of the Reformation, p. 628.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
I30
then wrote Luther for instruction, and, after a long

period of uncertainty, was finally persuaded to return
bosom of the Catholic church.^"

In Holland, Spalatin wrote, that there were an extraordinary number tainted with the Carlstadtian
to the
spirit.^^
much cheered by the split in the

how to make the
even praised
Eck
most of it at the imperial Diets.
Luther in comparison with Carlstadt. The humanists,
on the other hand, were repelled by the new prophet's
The
Catholics were
ranks of the Reformers, and knew
manner.^^
Luther's consciousness of the scandal given by the
"Carlstadt,"
schism greatly increased his rage.
he
wrote, "altogether given over to demons, pours forth

his fury against us in
poison of death and
many
hell.
But
over our schism.
printed books, full of the

.
God
in his
The papists rejoice

own time will find
committing a mortal sin." ^^

He was, indeed, thoroughly frightened at subjecIn answer to
tivism in a matter uncongenial to him.
an inquiry from Strassburg,^* he wrote a letter violently denouncing Carlstadt, December 17, 1524.^^ About
the same time he wrote, in two parts, his work. Against
the Heavenly Prophets of Images and the Sacrament.^^
Carlstadt, who,
The
first
think,
is
part of this treatise
is
directed against the
iconoclasm of the innovators, the second part

30
Barge,
"Billican."
31
ii.
245.
Religion
Geschichte
is
Barge,
ii.
259.
To
Jan.
3*
Enders, v. 59
ff.
35
Weimar,
Weimar,
xv. 391
xviii. 62
11, 1525,
ff,
ff.
on the
und Gegennvart,
'
^^ Ibid., 253.
33
Brismann,
36
in
Enders, v. 100
f.
ii.
274
ff.
s.v.
CARLSTADT
131
Lord's Supper.
In this he rightly criticizes Carlstadt's
grammatical mistake In making toUto unable, on account
of its gender, to refer to apro^.
Against Carlstadt's
claim that
Cor.
16 did not refer to communion at

"a very thunderbolt on the head of
Dr. Carlstadt and all his horde, and a lively medicine
for the heart tempted about the sacrajîent."
He advances the theory, borrowed from Scotus, of the
Luther
all,
calls
x.
it
ubiquity of Christ's body.
of
is
the
er of souls
rudest.
and
The
Carlstadt
a spirit of sin."
"the devil rides him;"
"the
tone of the pamphlet
Is
"a
called
murder-
Other phrases are:

head will master
cackles and cuckles;"
ass's
Greek;" "he tattles and tittles,

he has "a lying, evil spirit," "a deceitful, clandestine
devil, who crawls Into corners to do damage and
spread poison."
In general the work alienated other Protestants.
Melanchthon, Indeed, was only too ready to take the.

part of his leader against Carlstadt." But both Zwingand Oecolampadlus were displeased with It and
11
blamed the violence of Luther's "old Adam." '' Capi-
to also censured the author of the
work
for "leaping
upon
a downcast and ignoble foe," "for striking back at

one who has scolded him," and for pronouncing with
too much surety and finalty. The book, says Caplto, has
so soiled Luther's reputation for holiness that he wishes
It had never been written. ^^
Gerbel wrote from Strassburg that the work displeased almost everyone there,
at Zurich, and at Basle, and that Carlstadt was generally defended and Zwingll esteemed.*"
^"^
Corpus
38
Barge,
Ref.,
i.
col.
726, 730, 735, 740.
277 f.
39Vogt: Bug en hag ens Briejijaechsel,
*o Barge, ii.
276.
ii.
38, Oct. 8, 1525.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
132
Carlstadt's old parishioners at Orlamiinde stood by
"So does Satan rage," exclaims Luther, "that

the peasants use my book for toilet
paper!" *^
From the same place Luther heard silly
stories, which he greedily swallowed, about Carlstadt
pretending to have a familiar spirit who was really a
him.
at Orlamiinde
chaplain.*^
On
The Heavenly Prophets
receiving
in
February,
1525, Carlstadt immediately replied in three pamphThe most important of these was an Exegesis
lets.
of
Cor.
X.
i6y a text
which
his
He
opponent had called
show that it
These works,
however, seem to have been little read, as his star had
already begun to pale before those of Zwingli and
a thunderbolt on his head.
is
tries to
not that but a "plumcake" for him.
Oecolampadius.*^
But
his opinions
had become widely accepted by
In 1525 the preachers at Frankfurt am

taught that "the sacrament of the altar is noth-
time.
this
Main
ing but water and meal, and the priests
do nothing but
by."
^*
a devilish
work and
who say mass

God there-
crucify
more dramatic expression of
was given by the peasants
in the
these views
great rebellion.
At
that time the rustics of St. Blasien in the Black Forest,
broke into a church, and demolished altar and monstrance, while one of the men swallowed the hosts, remarking that "for once he would eat enough of God."
Somewhat similar proceedings took place at Ries and
at Rothenburg.*^
*i
Thomas Miinzer
confessed, before
To
Link, Feb. 7, 1525, Enders, v. 122.

Enders, v. 107 f, 123, Luther's Correspondence,
*3 Barge, ii. 279 ff.
** Janssen,2o ii. 667, note i.
*2
^Îbid., SIS, 597-
ii.
292.
CARLSTADT
133
Halle he had eaten two hundred

"Lord Gods" which he had not himself consecrated.*
Carlstadt was both discredited by the Peasants'
his execution, that at
and
Revolt
terrified
ing where to turn, he
its
came
Not knowWittenberg and was
outcome.
to
own
nothing but forced Carlstadt to
his protection for
On
ognize before God, without jest and from

all
re-
July 25 the latter published an Explanation^
saying, in language intentionally ambiguous:
that
that
"I rec-
my heart,
my own
wrote, spoke, or taught from
human, false, unpraiseworthy, deceitful, satanic, and to be shunned and

avoided." *^
What these human ideas were was left
unexpressed, but the recantation was universally underbrain or discovered for myself,
is
stood to refer to the doctrine of the eucharist, particularly as Luther immediately published the Explana-
with a preface expressing his
tion,
tainty.
What pressure was
own dogmatic
cer-
put upon Carlstadt to induce
"One
him
to sign even this,
see
me," he writes, "another follows me to seize or
is
told by himself:
will not
murder me, a third forbids me to buy food or drink,]

and a fourth does something else against me. I am so
harrassed that
key."
think
should be better
off
in
Tur-
The
was
Capito
a blow to the party.
mockery of the whole comedy
of reconciliation: Carlstadt had recanted; Luther had
Carlstadt cited
flattered him; "O evangelic men!
recantation
wrote Zwingli
in bitter
*6So Luther says

*^
48
some time during the summer of 1525 in

house.
The Reformer did not accord
received for
Luther's
cant.
by
Barge,
Barge,
ii.
366.
ii.
368.
in a
sermon of April
19,
1538,
Buchwald,
338.
,'
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
134
judgment; Luther asserted

that Carlstadt deserved capital punishment, and was no
man but had a cacodemon. And yet they became
reconciled, according to the word of Scripture, 'Agree
Luther before God's
last
with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art
way'
In
the
!" ''
In return for his compliance Carlstadt received perrmlsslon to live at
Kemberg
In
Saxony.
[inevitable that the old quarrel should
In August,
It
was almost
break out again.
Carlstadt was asked for another
1527,
statement of his views, and handed one to Chancellor

Briick, pointedly refraining
from expressing agreement
with Luther.
The Wittenberg
with him quite gently,^" but
professor expostulated
In the
next year their pas-
Carlstadt was exasperated by

up again.
Luther's Confession on Christ's Supper, and the other,
intercepting a letter written by his old friend to
Schwenckfeld, believed that he found evidence of conspiracy.
He demanded satisfaction, and even said
sions flared
that Carlstadt should be imprisoned.^^

Soon after this
The only
he received two pamphlets arguing the case.
reply he made was, "If Dr. Carlstadt has an argument
in the
words
Cor.
[i
xi.
'dedit' [Mark, xlv. 22] and 'donee venlet'

26] to prove that the body and blood of
Christ are not in the bread and wine and are not corporeally enjoyed, let him make the most of these
words, no matter what parts of speech they are." Carlstadt then appealed to the Elector John, complaining:
"I was not helped by such an answer, nor did I deserve
Truly
it.
It
were
49
Corp. Ref., xcv. 404
^0
End
51
Barge,
of
just as possible for
f.
November, Enders,
ii.
388.
me
vi.
127
ff.
Barge,
ii.
381.
to take
CARLSTADT
135
Dr. Luther's opinion about the sacrament with good

conscience and whole heart, merely on the ground of
what he has hitherto
written, as
the air like a bird.
fly in
it
would be for me
know
that
if
to
there
came an angel from heaven, and said that there was

another body of Christ than his natural body given
and broken for us on the cross, that angel would be an
abomination and curse to me and to all believers." ^^
Early the next year he fled from Saxony, and, after
wandering about, finally settled as professor at Basle.
In July, 1536, we find him negotiating with Bucer at
Strassburg about the Wittenberg Agreement, recently
signed.
He then recognized the real presence, with
the proviso that the sacrament consisted of two things,
an earthly, bread and wine, and a heavenly, body and

blood, "yea, the Lord himself."
But there was no
mixture of the two, or inclusion of the latter in or with
the bread.^^
Luther's
hatred of his old colleague passed all

In December, 1540, he said:
"If Carlstadt
believes that there is any God in heaven or earth, may
Christ my Lord never be kind nor gracious to me.
bounds.
That
my reason for makDr. Carlstadt knows that concerning the

bread and wine we do not utter bubbles nor hisses,
but that we speak the holy, heavenly words of God
Almighty, which Christ himself spoke with his holy
ing
is
it is
mouth
And
as
a terrible imprecation, but

this:
and commanded to be spoken.

Carlstadt knows that we have God's word, and
at the last supper,
yet dares deliberately to cry out against
and laugh
52
53
Barge,
Barge,
it
ii.
ii.
to scorn as a
585.
604.
human
hissing
it,
to
mock
it
and blowing,
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
136
thus destroying the poor people with such
lies
and
poison, and as he shows no fear, hesitation nor re-
morse
in
in so doing,
but only manifests joy and pleasure
such wickedness,
God
He
exists?
When,
is
how
can he believe or think that
possessed with devils not a few."
^*
1541, Luther heard of his rival's death, he

believed the superstitious tales he heard that the devil
in
had appeared
afterwards. ^^
to the dying
man and haunted
his
house
Indeed, the blind hatred of Carlstadt
continued not only at Wittenberg during the Reformer's life-time,
but even later.
5*
Conversations ivith Luther j
55
Letter of
March
26,
p. 38 f.
1542, Enders, xiv, 219.
VIL ZWINGLI
AND OECOLAMPADIUS
So crushing a blow was the ruthless suppression of

more radical wing of the
Protestants, that the heresy of believing that a wafer
is not God might, after 1526, have fallen into the same
the Peasant's Revolt to the
disrepute as did the heresy of the Anabaptists, had
it
not been taken up and championed by two able Swiss

reformers.
Ulrich Zwingll was by no means the rationalist that

^
and many others have painted him. But
Voltaire
in free
Switzerland, at the Universities of Vienna and
Basle, in converse with Erasmus and Zasius, he

breathed a fresher air than did Luther in the Saxon
Augustinian cloister. His temperament was even more
from Luther's than was hisi environment.

Something of a man of the world, averse neither to
pleasure nor to letters, he had never undergone that
rebirth of spiritual anguish which made all Luther's
thoughts center around his own salvation.
While the
ex-friar felt the need of some physical sign of forgiveness, and found it in the eucharist, the parish priest of
Zurich imbibed from that sturdy democracy the conception of the supreme importance of fellowship, and
this also he found in the communion.
If monastic piety was the special note of Luther,
different
"This famous Zwingli seemed more zealous for liberty than for
He thought virtue sufficed to assure happiness in the
other life
Doubtless he erred, but how human it is to err
thus!"
Essai sur les moeurs, cap. cxxix.
On Zwingli in general
see Smith: Age of Reformation, 146 if; on his controversy with Luther,
1
Christianity.
ibid.,
107
ff.
138
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
and democratic freedom of Zwingli, erudition may

perhaps be called the note of Oecolampadius. The
slowest in his development of all the Reformers, he
was forty before he declared definitely for them. At
Bologna, at Heidelberg, and at Tubingen, where he
learned to know Melanchthon and studied Greek, he
laid the foundations of
sound learning.
During the
years 15 15-18 he had the invaluable experience of aiding Erasmus in the edition of the Greek testament, his
knowledge of Hebrew.
Melanchthon sought to interest him in the Reformation,^ but he was at first apparently repelled by it, and
After two
entered a monastery in 1520 to find peace.
years he emerged, possibly influenced by Zwingli,^ to
whom he became a devoted friend. From this time
until his death he was the leading evangelical pastor
While still in the monastery he wrote a
in Basle.
^
on the eucharist in the most orthodox Catholic
tract
special qualification being his
style.
Like the other Reformers, Zwingli fell foul of the

Early in 1523 he stated that
sacrifice of the mass.
the canon of the mass had been composed not by one
man but by many, and that there was much in it both
superfluous and unlearned, as for example the words
"these gifts and offerings."
little later he expounded at length his opinion that Christ had been offered
once for all, and the mass was therefore not a sacrifice.^
^
^Luther's Correspondence, i. 200 ff, Melanchthon to Oecolampadius,

July 21, 1519.
^ Oecolampadius to Zwingli, Dec. lo, 1522, Corpus Reformatorum,
xciv, 634 f.
*J. Oecolampadii sermo de Sacramento eucharist'tae. [Colophon]
Augsburg, June 20, 1521.

^ Corpus Ref., Ixxxviii. 539.
^Corpus
Ref., Ixxxix.
in
ff.
Zwingli was doubtless influenced by
ZWINGLI AND OECOLAMPADIUS
139
His principal support for this view is the Epistle to

Hebrews, with its anti-Pauline polemic. One
source for his doctrine he mentions is Luther's Sermon
on the New Testament (1520), with which he declares
himself well pleased, at the same time asserting that he
had taught the gospel in 15 16, before he had heard of
the
Luther.'
In August, 1523, he published a short Essay on the

the same views at
Canon of the Mass^^ supporting

more length. He objects even to
the
name "mass"
as
In
not used by Christ, by Paul, or by the ancients.

examining word by word the canon of the mass, he
proposes that the passage describing the institution be
brought back exactly and fully to the
He
New
Testament.
objects to transubstantiation, while expressly de-
body of Christ is eaten and drunk with

As he wished to change nothing
wine.^
and
the bread
save what he regarded as contrary to the gospel, the
book was too conservative for some of his Zurich
parishioners, and he was obliged to publish another
On the other side he
tract to defend it '" from them.
had to guard it from the attacks of the Catholic Em-
claring that the
ser.^^
Liturgic
reform proceeded slowly.
In
October,
1523, the three parish priests of Zurich announced that

on Christmas day communion would be given in both
kinds
and that thenceforth exposition of

.
Scripture
Luther, but he had a predecessor at Zurich in Benedict Dischmacher,

who denied the sacrifice of the mass in 1522. Corpus Ref., xcvi. 35.
''Ibid.,
8
137
De canone
f,
144
"conatus," ibid., 556

9 Ibid., 589 f.
1*^
^^
ff.
m'lssae epicheresis, the last
word explained by him
as
fiF.
De canone missae libelli apologia. Corpus Ref. Ixxxix. 617

Adversus H. Emserum Antibolon, 1524. Corpus Ref. xc. 230
ff.
ff.
I40
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
But the council, on

October 27, decreed that things should be left as they
were.
On December 19 they conceded further discussion, which took place in January.
But action was still
deferred, and it was not until April 12, 1525, that mass
was celebrated for the last time at Zurich, and thenceforward a communion service substituted for it.^^
In 1523 Zwingli's ideas of a necessary reform were
very modest.
In working over the canon of the mass
he had inserted new prayers in place of old ones, but
still in Latin, and had even left words like "hostia"
and "oblatio," only trying to give them a new sense. ^^
The liturgy which Zwingli prepared in March or April,
1525, under the title Procedure or Use of the Supper^^* as much more radical.
Its language is German.
The communicants are assembled in the nave, the men
on the right the women on the left around a table furnished with unleavened bread and with wine.
The
minister passes the bread around in plates, which, to
avoid unnecessary luxury, are to be made of wood.
The first service, on Maundy Thursday, was for the
young, the second, on Holy Friday, for the middleFour
aged, and the third, on Easter, for the old.
communions a year, at Easter, Whitsuntide, September
would take the place of the mass.
1 1
and Christmas were originally planned. The gospel

was appointed to be John vi. 47-63, and af-
for the day
peace" was bestowed on the book. After an admonition to think of

the Lord's death, and a prayer, the communion began
with the reading of i Cor. xi. 23-26, and the distribution of bread and wine.
ter the reading the Catholic "kiss of
i^Kidd, 409, 438, 441. Corpus Ref. xci, 4

^3 Corpus Ref., xci. 2.
^*Ibid., 13 ff. Aktion oder Bruch des Nachtmahls.
flr.
141
Confession and absolution were abolished as a prepit was felt necessary
aration for communion, but as
to exclude persons of scandalous life
Zwingli drew up a memorial
table,
^^
from the Lord's

on
this subject.
Besides such criminals as murderers, perjurers, and
he proposed to excommunicate adulterers,

fornicators, blasphemers, drunkards, and usurers who
His plan, however, met
took more than 5% interest.
robbers,
with practical
difficulties In execution.
Similar reforms were slow in being carried out in
Not
1529 was Oecolampadius

mass had been abolished and
the images taken out of the churches and burned.
"This spectacle," said he, "was forsooth very sad to
They had to weep blood.
the superstitious.
Thus, while we raged against idols the mass died of
other Swiss
cities.
until
able to announce that the
sorrow." "
In 1524 Zwingli arrived at the belief that the bread
and wine were mere signs of the body and blood of
He derived this opinion chiefly from Honius,
Jesus.
That he did
the much appealed to Dutch theologian.
so is recorded by his friend Kessler,^^ and is now
proved by a just published letter, in which he confesses
his full debt to Honius, "that moderately learned and
immoderately pious man." ^^
It
is
also certain that Carlstadt greatly influenced
Zwingli, although the latter rejected

the
former's
reasoning.
Leo Jud
many
first
details in
persuaded
Zwingli to read the sacramentarian, whereupon the

Zuricher avowed that he liked
15
Corpus
16
To
disliked
much
Ref., xci. 25 ff.

Capito, Feb. 13, 1529, Kidd, 466.
i^John Kessler: Sabbata, 1904,

18
much and
To Krautwald
p.
138.
&c, April 17, 1526,
Corpus
Ref., xcv. 567
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
142
what he read.
in
In particular he could not agree with
from the gender of tovto.^^

In the autumn of 1524 Carlstadt came to Zurich, but
Zwingli was persuaded by "certain persons of melanOecocholy spirit" not to grant him an audience.^"
lampadius judged Carlstadt more favorably."
Once the slightest divergence of creed was started
between the Saxon and the Swiss Reformers it was sureto be widened by the intense self-consciousness and
touchiness of each party.
During the first years after
the grammatical argument
the posting of the Ninety-five Theses, indeed, Zwingli
had nothing but admiration for the bold
rebel against
oppression.
He called him another
and persuaded Zasius not to write against him."
In July,
But his opinion soon became more reserved.
1522, he refuses to be called either a Lutheran or a
Hussite, and says that if Luther's doctrine resembles
his it is because both have drunk from the same biblical
fountains. ^^
A few months later he makes the same
ecclesiastical
Elijah,
assertion
more
positively, saying that he does not de-
fend Luther but the gospel.^*
He
had begun
to
preach
before he ever heard of Luther, and refuses
in 15 16
to be called
by
his
name, though he approves of
his
In 1525, as already related, Zwingli was

alienated by the violence of the work Against the Heavdoctrine. ^^
Still
of Images and the Sacrament.
was he offended by the Wittenberger's ferocious
enly Prophets
more
19
Barge,
260.
ii.
20 7^-;^., 216.
^ Ibid.,
262.
^^ Luther's
Correspondence,
1520.
23
Corpus Ref., Ixxxix, 224,
^*Ibid., 437.
25
Corpus Ref.,
xc. 147.
i.
251,
note
i;
p.
304.
In
1519 and
143
pamphlet against the peasants.-*' Even had he not approved the revolt, as he did," he might well have been
repelled by the cruelty of the Reformer who urged the
authorities to stab, smite, and slay the poor, misguided
rustics.
Luther on
his side
assumed that he had a monopoly

who advanced independent
of truth and that those
opinions were, so to speak, infringing his copyright.

Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius, said he,
never have learned to
know
would
Christ's gospel rightly "if
Luther had not written of it first." ^^ But when they

dared not only to discover new truths, but to defend
"I
them, they were rebels and traitors to the cause.
am compelled," he wrote in January, 1526, "to bear
with these sons of my body, my Absoloms, who with-
me so furiously. They are scourges of the sacrament, compared to whose madness the papists are
mild.
I never understood before how evil a spirit is
stand
Satan, nor did
my
spirit-
"Hitheryear later he wrote:

have suffered in all ways. But not until now did
Absolom, my dear son, hunt and shame his father
ual wickedness."
to I
comprehend Paul's words about

^^
My
Judas [Zwingli] had not yet shamed the

disciples and betrayed his Master, but now he has done
^
his worst on me."
Zwingli's first utterance on the subject is found in his
Epistle to Matthew Alber,^^ a Lutheran pastor of Reutlingen, on the Lord's Supper, dated November 16,
David.
26
27
28
^^
30
31
Corpus Ref., xcv. 471, to Vadian, Dec. 23, 1525.

Historiche Zeitsc/irift, ex. 90.
Weimar, xxiii. 34 f.
Luther's Correspondence, ii. 363.
Smith, Luther, 241.
Corpus Ref., xc. 322 ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
144
(
I
I
was intended as an "open letter," for, though

not printed until March, 1525, it was widely circulated
in manuscript, copies of it being sent to a number of
selected ministers in Switzerland and South Germany.
It was not even sent to its addressee, whose strong
Lutheran bias was considered unassailable. The reason for this disingenuous procedure was doubtless the
wish, on Zwingli's part, to spread his views abroad
1524.
It
without exciting quarrels.
The
content of the letter
is
an examination of Carlstadt's arguments, and, along

many of them, especially of the
with the rejection of
famous
TovTo,
the acceptance of his
main
position.
The letter was sent to Luther by Nicholas Gerbel of

Strassburg, in April if not earlier.^^
In the meantime Luther's Letter to the Christians
Capito sent it to
of Strassburg had been printed.
Zwingli on February 6, 1525, blaming it for lack of
moderation, but censuring Carlstadt still more severely
Capito begged his friend to be careful,
as he feared the Imperial Diet would act against them
Their church, he said, had
for Carlstadt's heresy.
long been convinced that the bread remained true
for vainglory.
bread, nor was the body of Christ present in

that
was absent
in
heaven.
it,
for
^^
In March, 1525, Zwingli published his Commentary

on true and false Religion^ setting forth his theological
system at length.
large section of this
to the Lord's Supper.^*
He
32
Gerbel to Luther, Enders, v.

St. Louis Walch edition, xxia,
the
155,
p.
734,
Latins,
there
dated
Corpus
Ref., xc. 772
ff.
called
April
it
lo-n.
makes the probable sug-
gestion that the letter should really be placed earlier.

33 Corpus Ref., xcv. 299 ff.
3*
devoted
notes that the Greeks,
more learned and pious than

The
is
145
"eucharist," or thanksgiving, and that Paul spoke of

it
( I
He
Cor. xvi, 16) as communion.
weightiest words on the subject in John
finds Christ's
vi.
26
These
ff.
not, says he, refer to the sacramental bread, but to
do
food of believers.
bread
without being
communion
who feed on him in faith are his.
Many
faith, the real
that
the
profiteth
much
flesh
profiteth
nothing as
as the victim
ever, he thinks,
for
meaning that
it
it
profited
certainly
These words, how-
cross.
prove the body
really eat the
Christ, but those
Jesus says expressly
nothing,
food,
on the
in
is
not present
bread "really, corporeally or essentially." To pretend

to eat the body is godless, foolish and "a human gobbling."
Expounding the words "This is my body,"
Zwingli says that "is" means "signifies."
adds
mass.
few words against Emser, on the
He
concludes:
"And
He
then
of the
sacrifice
so the Supper, be
it
called
communion, or Lord's meal, is nothing else

commemoration, by which those who believe
eucharist,
than a
steadfastly
in
the
reconciliation
with
the
Father
through Christ's death and blood, proclaim, that is,

praise, give thanks for, and preach this death-untoAll the older fathers, it is stated, have so unlife."
derstood
it.
There was no lack of champions

gauntlet.
Willibald Pirckheimer of
to take
up the
Nuremberg wrote
Oecolampadius inonce on the Lutheran side.

formed him, in a letter dated April 25, 1525, that the
at
town council of Basle would summon a conference on

the sacrament, but nothing came of this.^^
In August, 1525, Bugenhagen, the parish priest of
Wittenberg, published a letter Against the new error
35
Schubert in Z. K. G., xxix. 324.
in the
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
146
Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord

Nicholas von Amsdorf, formerly a colleague of Luther and now pastor of Magdeburg, took
up the cudgels in the same cause. These works
aroused less sympathy than opposition.
Lewis Hetzer
of Augsburg said that the former ought to be hissed
and that the latter was worse than cowdung.^^ On
his side Bugenhagen wrote ^^ "Zwingli calls us carnivores and deniers of the redemption of the cross,
because we confess the body and blood of Christ in
the sacrament."
But, he adds, Zwingli is no theoloin the
Jesus Christ.
gian.
Oecolampadius,
who had conferred with Zwingli on

now hastened to his friend's as-
the subject in 1524,
pamphlet on The genuine Exposition

of the Lord's words, This is my Body, according to the
most ancient authors}^ He traced the whole error
of the real presence to Peter Lombard.
"This is my
body" he called a trope, no rnore literally to be undersistance with a
stood than Paul's saying that Christ was a rock.

miracle
in the
is
performed by the
new worship of
Corpus Christi day,

Bible
is
is
priest.
The
No
superstition
bread, as seen for example in

severely scored by him.
The
stated to be above the sacraments and the only
essential to salvation.
Many
of the ancient fathers
are quoted.
fresh crop of refutations immediately appeared.
James Strauss of Eisenach wrote two tracts against

Zwingli and Oecolampadius, calling their opinion "a
lamentable
confounding
Christians."
'^
36
Barge, ii. 238.

To Gerbel, Nov.
of
many thousand
simple
4, 1525, Vogt, 52 flF.

^^J. Oecolampadii de genuina Verborum Domini, &c, liber, is^S39 Barge, ii. 256.
3''

J.
Brenz, a Swabian clergyman, wrote two works on
the subject.
One was an open
name Syngramma^
man
in
Bucer/
letter to
other was published by his colleagues

the
147
The
Swabia, under
in
To
October, 1525.*^
the Ger-
translation of this, in 1526, Luther wrote a pre-
face stating that his arguments advanced in the
work
Against the Heavenly Prophets have not yet been overcome, and blaming his opponents for relying only on
reason.
About
the
same time some of
the subject were published with the
his
sermons on
On
title.
the Sacra-
ment of the Body and Blood of Christ against the

Ranting Spirits.^^ Of this Zwingli said that Luther
admonished them hardly more civilly than he had the
rebellious peasants.*^
With
the Lutherans the
cause.
On
right?
The sad
Catholics
made common
October 28, 1525, Eck directed a long

letter to the Swiss Confederates begging them not to
The
be led astray by Zwingli and Oecolampadius.
former had once recognized Luther as a master, why
should he not do so now, when at last Luther was
results of these errors in
Germany
name Husschein is
dubbed "ein hussischer schein."
Eck says that he has just been through the Netherlands and England, and of seventy cities he visited
only three were Lutheran,^ and in two of these three
nothing was changed in the church service.^*
Cardinal Cajetan also felt called upon to condemn
the new heresy in two pronouncements of 1525.^^
In
are
painted.
punned
Oecolampadius's
on, for he
is
*"
Corpus Ref., xcv. 438, note.

Kostlin-Kawerau, ii. 80 ff.
^2 Kostlin-Kawerau, ii. 83.
_43 To Vadian, Dec. 23, 1525, Corpus Ref., xcv. 471.
** Briefmappe, i., ed. Greving, 1912,
pp. 154 ff.
*5 Instructio nuncii circa errores libelli de cena dom'ini per capita
*^
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
148
combating the Zwinglians he advanced a remarkably

free interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.
said he,
and without perception of either the sense

simply by faith that his body is taken
"spiritually
or the
Christ,
not eaten "corporeally or perceptibly" but
is
intellect,
The
in the eucharist."
"corporeal eating" relates only
to the "sacramental species of the
under which
bread and wine,
contained the true flesh of Christ; but
is
the spiritual eating, which
is
done through the
soul,
pertains to the flesh of Christ existing in the sacra-
ment."
Another Catholic apology was written by John

Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.
He made the most of
the dissensions among the Reformers, and violently
attacked Luther, Carlstadt, and Melanchthon.
Oecolampadius was said to err even more than Luther, and
a very lengthy refutation of his propositions was
given.*^
Erasmus,
too,
came very near being drawn
into the
Notwithstanding Melanchthon's opinion
controversy.
than "the whole tragedy of the Lord's Supper originat-
ed from Erasmus"
He
orthodoxy.
*^
did indeed point out that the sacrifice
of the mass was not a
he ventured to
the humanist always professed
dogma
criticize
officially sanctioned,*
those priests
and
who regarded
less
Neverthehe occasionally spoke of the mass as a sacrifice and
the mass chiefly as a
iussu
means of
livelihood.*
dementis VII; Traciatus de erroribus contingentibus
Both analysed by Lauchert, 157 ff.

corporis et sanguinis Christi in eucharistia per
referendum in Christo patrem ac Dominum D. Johannem Roffensem
Episcopum adversus Johannem Oecolampadium. Coloniae. 1527.
^''Corpus Reformatorum, i. 1083; iv. 970; Jackson, 85.
"^^
Apology to Certain Spanish Monks, 1528, Opera, ix. 1064-6.
in Eucharistiae
*^
De
*^
Opera,
Sacramento.
veritate
iii.
1274.

by so doing put his works, even during
der the ban of the Protestants/"
On
the doctrine of the real presence
149
his lifetime, un-
Erasmus was
at
impressed by the arguments of the Swiss.

On
October 2, 1525, he wrote Michael Buda, Bishop of
first
Langres
^^
:
A new dogma has arisen, that the eucharist is nothing but bread
and wine. It is difficult to refute. Oecolampadius has supported it
with such copious and powerful arguments and citations that it seems
as
if
the elect might be seduced.
Again he wrote
friends,
June
6,
to
Pirckheimer, one of his best
1526:
Oecolampadius' opinion of the eucharist would not displease me

were it not opposed to the consensus of the church. For I do not
see what is the function of the body which cannot be apprehended
by the senses, nor what use it would be if it could be grasped by the
senses, provided that a spiritual grace is present
But the authority of the church binds me.^^
Again he wrote
if
to the
same
should have some doubts, as one
the
friend, July 30,

little
authority of the church, by which
symbols.
the
in
1526:
learned, on the eucharist,

I
mean
the
consensus of
Christians throughout the world, did not reassure me.^^
Erasmus was evidently more than half convinced

by the arguments of the Swiss, and yet believed it
better to resign his right of private
judgment
point positively decided by the church.
At
the
in
same
time he had no wish to be drawn into the quarrel,

though vigorous efforts were made to induce him to
defend the Catholic position.^* In the latter part of
soMyconius
col. 47.
^^ Epistolae,
to
Bullinger,
June
London, 1642, xx,
^^ Episiolae, 1642,
^3 Ibid, xxx,
24,
1535,
Corpus
Ref.,
xxxviiib,
60.
xxx, 44.
43.
54
p Toussain
to Farel, Sept. 18, 1525, Herminjard i, 385; Botzheim to Erasmus, Feb. 2, 1527, Forstemann und Giinther: Brief e an
Erasmus, 1904, p. 64; G. Thomas to Erasmus, Aug. 31, 1527, ibid.,
p. 85.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
I50
1526, indeed, he began a work against Oecolampadius,

but gave it up, as he wrote Pirckheimer, fearing that it
would
profit
no one and might only
excite tumult,
seeing that Fisher and the Parisians
futed the Swiss heretic.^^
When
and
had already
re-
Pirckheimer himself
wrote against Oecolampadius, Erasmus blamed him

for seeming to wish to agree with Luther rather than
with the church. ^^
On
made
the other
hand he indignantly resented an
to enlist the authority of his
the Swiss doctrine.
Leo Jud,
name
in
effort
support of
a friend of Zwingli, un-
der the pseudonym of Lewis Leopold, published in
German The
opinion of the most learned Erasmus of

Rotterdam and of Dr. Martin Luther on the Supper.^''
The ingenious author tries to prove by quotations from
Erasmus's works that he regards the bread and wine
as mere symbols, and then deduces that Luther ought
to believe the same because he believes there is no
:
difference
between the
priest,
who
consecrates the ele-
ments, and any layman.
The pamphlet came
Erasmus's attention
and on May 15, 1526, he wrote to the synod assembled
at Baden that this book showed both ignorance and
malice, and that it was a shame that the publication
at once to
of such works, once a capital crime, should

^^
Pirckheimeri Opera, ed. Goldast, 1610,
p. 286.
now
be
Dated "postridie
Lucae" (Oct. 19), 1527.

^^ Opera Erasmi, 1703, iii.
941.
^"^
Des Hochgelerten Erasmi von Roterdam und Doctor Martin
Luthers maynung vom Nachtmal
[Colophon] April
1526.
Ludovicus Leopold! Pfarrer zu Leberaw. I use the copy
18, 1526.
.
Bodleian Library, Tract. Luth. 46, no. 16. On the authorship

Erasmiana, 1893, iii. 32, and the Vadianische Briefsammlung, vi, (1906) p. 265, where Frecht writes to Vadian, Nov.
3, 1543, that the book has just been republished and that some think
Leopold is Leo Jud.
in the
see Bibliotheca
151
men who claimed to represent the gospel. ^^

In like tenor he wrote an open letter ^^ to all lovers of
the truth, saying that the deep difference between the
the sport of
Reformers and himself
is
best testified by them.
For
himself, he wrote again, he regarded their differences
among themselves
as mutually discreditable and pioushoped that those who have followed Berengar in
his error will also follow him In his repentance.'"'
ly
In private letters he also defended himself.
Conrad
Pellican,
the latter's insinuations that they
on the eucharist were
me
me
To
an evangelical pastor, he wrote that

false.
to believe the gospel; the
had the same
belief
'The church persuaded

same mistress
shall teach
He even
expressed his willingness to be torn to pieces rather
than assert that the sacrament was but bread and
wine.^''
To Pellican he wrote again: "You threaten
me with Zwingli's pen; in a matter I really care about
to interpret the
words of the gospel."
^^
how the world is drenched

with blood for the sake of a few ambiguous articles
I would rather dissemble my belief in ten such articles
than bring on such evils." ^
I
fear not ten Zwinglis. See
Another humanist who wrote in the conservative

sense was Paracelsus,^* whose pamphlets On the Supper and That the Flesh and Blood are in the Bread
and Wine, appeared in the early thirties.
The Zwinglians
did not waste time in refuting the
^^ Epistolae, 1642, xix,

45.
^Îbid., XXX, 58, June, 1526.

Cf. Praestigiarum Ubelli
Detectio, June, 1526, Opera, x, 1557 f.
60 In the Hyperastistes, Part I,
1526, Opera, x, 1263.
^^ Epistolae, 1642, xix,
95.
^^
cujusdam
Opera, 1703, iii, 894; Corpus Ref., xcv, 395, 407 ff, 725.
^Êpistolae, 1642, xix, 96.
Compressed translation.
6* A. M. Stoddart: Paracelsus,
1911, p. 255.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
152
Catholics, for they
had
all
they could do to grapple
with their fellow Protestants.
By
this
time
all efforts
them had become vain. When the Strassburgers sent an embassy with this purpose to Luther
In 1525, he curtly remarked:
"One party or the other
must be from Satan. The Holy Spirit is no pettifogger, but what he says Is certain." ^^
"Posterity will
to reconcile
Ambrose Blaurer, "at our

symbol of union." ^^ "We have
come to the point," observed Gerbel to Bugenhagen,
"that from the symbol of supreme love to us arise
laugh," wrote Capito to
quarrels over the
such hatreds, such wrath, such enmities!"
more moderate than
Zwingll,
his
^"^
Even
to
opponent, Capito
"What you are collecting In three articles to

combat the bread-flesh and the Impanate God is a
useful labor, but I fear you are too vehement for con-
wrote:
ditions of peace."
^^
To
Luther Oecolampadlus made a Reasonable

in 1526, directed at the Swabian "Syngramma." He defended Carlstadt and complained that
Luther called them false prophets and blasphemers
because they had said his God was a "baked God,"
and a "bread God" and that he was a "God-flesh-eater," and "God-blood-drinker."
For his own part
Oecolampadlus believed in a crucified God, not in a
bread God.
He praised Luther In everything except
Answer
in the
f
'^^
sacrament.
Zwingli also published
in
February, 1526, A Clear

Along with cogent
Explanation of Christ's Supper.

65Baum,
66
335.
Blaurer, i. 124 f. Nov. 26, 1525.

Vogt, 60, Jan. 1526.
68 Feb.
3, 1526, Corpus Ref., xcv. 517.
69 Billiche Antivort J. Ecolampadij auf D. Martin Luthers Bericht
des sacramentts halb. 1526.
67
153
argument in support of his opinion he alleged that its

had been revealed to him in a dream. This
method of proof unfortunately impressed Luther with
the idea that Zwingli's "spirit" was akin to that of
Miinzer and the Zwickau prophets who had cultivated
dreams with such disastrous results. This' strange
truth
of superstition
relic
Zwingli
made
is
all
the
more
striking in that
the most of the impossibility of the ex-
istence of the substance of the flesh without
perceptible to
"this
is
the
He
senses.
my body"
its
being
compared the trope
to Christ's saying "I
am
the true
mere figure, of course, and not literally true.'^

These works had so much success that their authors
were able to prophecy that within three years all Christendom would be converted to their opinion. A conference held at Baden in June showed that the more
respected and greater part of the ministers agreed with
vine," a
the Swiss, including all the Strassburgers but Hedio.
In that
city,
Gerbel
said, Luther's
sold, either because of the
nents or because
all
books were seldom
machinations of his oppo-
were so pleased with their
"signifi-
cat" that they despised other interpretations.
Everyone hoped for eventual union, for it was thought that

the schism hurt the evangelical cause more than had
When
Luther's works were
to be with the
purpose of confirming
the Peasants' Revolt.^"^

read,
it
was said "
the people in the opinion opposite to his.
At Nuremberg, on
works
Their author protested in a letter
to the council dated July 2, 1526.
He said it was imthe other hand, Zwingli's
were proscribed.
"^^
^1
June
72
Kostlin-Kawerau, ii. 72 ff.

Gerbel to Bugenhagen, June
5,
Enders, v. 356.
Capito to Zwingli, Oct. 17, 1526,
Vogt, 62
f.
Gerbel
to Luther,
5,
Corpus
Ref., xcv. 749
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
154
body could be
possible that Christ's
eaten, he called
John and the

"whole chorus of the learned ancients until 400" teach
this, and that the contrary belief is repugnant to the
article of the creed, "He ascended into heaven and
"
sitteth at the right hand of God."
This letter only called forth another rebuttal from
the elements signs only, he averred that
Pirckheimer of that city, directed also against OecoIn reply to Zwingli's last argument Pircklampadius.
heimer drew from Scotus the theory of the ubiquity of
Christ's body, afterwards taken up and made classic by
Luther.^*
padius,
has."
The work
was
itself
written, says
Oecolam-
"with as much charity as the devil himself

He wrote an answer to it, which he thinks "that
insane beast [Pirckheimer] will try to eat alive."
From Nuremberg, on
"
the other side, the humanist
John Haner wrote Zwingli
that the
word
imovmo'i in the
Lord's prayer proved that Christ's presence in the
bread should be understood
in a spiritual sense.
'^^
In the early spring of 1527 Zwingli published two

A Friendly Exegesis of Christ's JVords,'''' in
Friendly Appeasement and Rebuttal^ in
Latin, and
polemics,
German.'^
As
his
arguments have by
this
time become
familiar to us, they need not be repeated.
At
the
close of the Exegesis he says that persistence in Luth-
Both works he sent to

error becomes impiety.
Luther with a letter of April i, ill calculated, by its
supercilious tone, to allay the wrath of the Wittenberg
"You have produced
professor, to whom he said:
er's
^3
Corpus
Ref., xcv. 634.
ff.
74 . R. E., V. 568.
'^^
To
''^
Corpus
77
''^
Zwingli, Feb. 28, 1527, Corpus Ref., xcvi. 59.

Ref., xcvi. 65.
Schuler und Schulthess,

Ibid., ii, part ii, i ff.
iii.
459
ff.
155
nothing on this subject worthy either of yourself or of

the Christian reHgion
and yet your ferocity daily
"Zwingli has sent
creases."
wrote Luther on
May
own hand worthy
4,
me
in-
foolish book,"
his
"together with a letter from
of his haughty
spirit.
So gentle
and threatening, that he
seems to me incurable and condemned by manifest
truth.
But my comprehensive book has profited
many. ^^
The work alluded to appeared almost simultaneously with Zwingli's under the title That the Words, This
is my Body, still stand fast against the Ranting Spirits.^
After stating that he had already treated the matter so
thoroughly that no one could go astray in it save he
who wished to err, Luther blamed the "famous humil-
his
was
he,
raging,
foaming,
ity" of the ranters,
arrogance and scorn.
as being, in reality, nothing but
His
an exegesis
of the words of institution with the insistence that they
first
section
is
literally.
Zwingli says "is" means "signifies,"
and Oecolampadius that "body" means "sign of my
One
body," by which they are falsifying Scripture.
could make any text mean anything by this method.
You might just as well say^ that the first verse of
Genesis meant "In the beginning the cuckoo ate the
hedge-sparrows with feathers and all," and defend it
by averring that "God" meant "cuckoo," "made";
meant "ate," and "heaven and earth" meant "hedgesparrows with feathers and all."
If anyone asks,
"What devil suggested that to you?" the answer is
plain: the same devil that suggested their exegesis to
the Swiss reformers.
No, they have nothing for them
be taken
''^
Smith, Luther, 242; Luther's Correspondence,
80
Weimar,
xxiii. 38
ff.
ii.
398
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
156
but simple blasphemy, by which they strangle Christ
and the church and then they say Luther ought to keep
peace with them
The second section of this "comprehensive work"
;
devoted to proving the ubiquity of Christ's body. The

third part is an extraordinarily extended exegesis of
John vi, followed by proofs from the fathers, Augusis
tine, Tertullian,
final
Irenaeus, Hilarius, and Cyprian.
The
section emphasizes the use and necessity of the
actual eating of the Saviour's body.
The work produced various effects. At Strassburg,

Hedio was of the hopeful opinion that it showed that
were not so far apart, and that such men
of God as were Luther, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius
might well be reconciled. Another person, unnamed,
The Anmade bold to remark that this pamphlet
the
two
sides
tiranter,^^ as
it
was
called
had
in
it
nothing of Paul's
spirit.
Zwingli was greatly exasperated by the work's tone,

and said that "its whole contents was nothing but lies,
and suspicion." ^^ He composed

a reply to it, entitled, That the Words of Christ, "This
is my Body,*' still have the same old Sense, and that
Martin Luther with his last Book has not proved his
own and the pope's Sense.^^ The argument brought
slander, sycophancy
In tone it was, quite naturally,

forth no new points.
sharper than anything that had previously come from
It was published in June,
the Zurich reformer's pen.
1527.
Luther's answer, a huge Confession on Christ's
81 "Antischwermerus."
Gerbel to Luther,
Enders, vi. 58 f.
82 Smith, Luther, 242.
83 Schuler und Schulthess, ii. part ii, 16 ff.
end
of
May,
1527,

appeared
Supper,"^*
in
the February following.
157
He
expressed his joy that his words have so greatly angered Satan, by which sign he knows that they have
done much good. His argument, too, is the same old
one, an insistence on taking the
words of
institution
an endeavor to show that the real presence

possible, and a sharp critique of Zwingll's philosophy
literally,
is
and exegesis.
This polemic only increased the rage without shaking the convictions of the sacramentarians.
judged that
it
Zwingli
was "a fog through which one cannot
clearly see the mystery of Christ, an
example of deny-
what one has affirmed a little before, a spouting

geyser of enormous cursing." ^^ Again, he complained ^^
that Luther incautiously murders reason, human and
divine, which otherwise might easily have come to her
ing
own among
be
the pious.
in vain, as
He
fears that any answer will
Luther, a true Scotist and Thomist, closes
his ears.
He
and Oecolampadius nevertheless produced reTwo Answers to Martin

Luther's Book, called a Confessions'^
The authors
merely show that they have exhausted the arguments
on their side, as they are not able to advance fresh
buttals, printed together as
reasons.
By
mon
this time the
Lutherans were ready to make com-
cause with the Catholics against the newer sects.
The Diet
of Spires, passed a decree, on April 22, 1529,

who denied the body and blood of Christ
that those
s*
8^
8^
Weimar, xxvi. 241.

To Ambrose Blaurer, July
To Conrad Som, August
21, Blaurer,
i.
162.
Brief aus der

Reformationszeit, Basel, 1887, p. 21.
s" Both are republished
in Walch's edition of Luther's works, xx.
cols. 1538-1884.
30,
1528,
Stahelin:
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
158
should not be represented
in the estates
A distinction was thus made

to
whom
The
made
favor of the Lutherans,
was granted.
limited toleration
political
division
in
of the Empire.^
weakness of the Protestants due to
their
statesmen desire a cessation of
their
mutual animosities
make
front against the
in
order to enable them to
common
Hesse
it was
the Diet of Spires of 1526, by
foe.
Philip of
had cherished the idea of a conference ever since

suggested to him, at
James Sturm. The notorious Duke Ulrich of Wiirttemberg was also anxious to heal the schism. Luther
was approached on the subject in 1527, but refused to
Notwithstanding the increased bitterpens, making Luther feel more and
more deeply the hopelessness of harmony, yet Philip
kept urging him to It until finally. In the summer of
It was now Melanchthon's
1529, he got his consent.
consider
it.^
ness of the
war of
He
thought that a conference with Oecolampadius might be good, but not with
Zwingll, and that if there were a meeting "some hon-
turn to raise objections.
orable and reasonable papists" ought to be present.^"
The
were finally overcome,

and a meeting was arranged which took place October
As a basis
1-3, 1529, at Philip's castle at Marburg.
of discussion Luther and Melanchthon drew up, before
objections of
all
parties
they went, a confession of faith commonly called the

Schwabach Articles, in which their differences with the
Zwingllans, particularly in the loth
^
article,
on the Sup-
were sharply set forth.

Besides the principal Saxon and Swiss reformers, a
per,
ssMirbt, 198 f.
89 Schubert in Z. K. G., xxix. 330
90
Corpus
91
Schubert, p. 20
Ref.,
i.
1067.
ff.
ff.

number of
from South German
159
were
were
private: Luther with Oecolampadius, Melanchthon
with Zwingli, and Bucer and Hedio with Brentz and
Osiander.
These were followed, on October 2 and 3,
by a public debate between Luther on the one side and
Zwingli and Oecolampadius on the other.^^
The arguments were the old, familiar ones. Luther wrote
on the table before him "This is my body," and repeated over and over that it was all-sufficient. Zwingli
and Oecolampadius again countered this with the verse
"The flesh profiteth nothing," and Luther's theories
present.
divines
The
first
cities
conferences, on October
i,
about the ubiquity of Christ's body, with the
"He
us
not indeed
it
became more
to those present, but to
that the reason for these interminable beatings
about the bush lay
from
Here
ascended into heaven."
clear than ever
article
in the fact that
a false premise,
could be reconciled.
both parties started
namely that reason and Scripture

If that
is
an incomprehensible statement
postulated, then,
is
made
in
when
the Bible,
ways of disposing of it. The first

is true, though repugnant
to reason, an actual fact though impossible.
The second is to explain away the meaning of the text and to
show that it really signifies something else than what
it says.
Luther had no difficulty in showing that the
really
taught that the bread and the body
Bible
of Christ were in some manner identical; where he
failed was in showing how this was possible. Zwingli
was equally able to prove that the real presence was
there are only two
is
to say that the proposition
Eight contemporary accounts printed, Weimar, xxx, part iii,

Also consult S. M. Jackson: Zvjingli, p. 315. Smith: "A Decade
of Luther Study," Harvard Theological Revieiv, xiv, 1921, p. 119.
^-
94
ff.
C/]L>^,lH^"
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
i6o
inconceivable and absurd; his difficulty lay in explain-
ing
away
New
the categorical statements of the
And
ment.
so all parties retained their
Testa-
former opin-
ions.
Although next to nothing had been accomplished,

was anxious to have something to show for his
trouble and so induced the divines present to draw up a
Philip
common
statement of their
resultant
by both
Marburg
beliefs.
Fourteen of the
Articles deal with points agreed on
sides; the fifteenth states that they are unable
agree on "the bodily presence of the body and

blood" and that each side prays for enlightenment.
to
were signed by Luther, Jonas, MelanchAgricola, Brentz, Oecolampadius,

Zwingli, Bucer and Hedio.
When, however, it came to personal intercourse,
Luther refused the proferred hand of Zwingli with the
remark, especially stinging on account of its previous
connotation, that the Swiss had a different spirit from
The Landgrave did all he could, wrote
his own.
Bucer, to make the opponents friends, but the Lord
willed that Luther would have no peace with them
Melanchsave what he had with Turks and Jews.
These
articles
thon,
Osiander,
thon was said to be even more unconciliatory,
if
pos-
sible.^^
Before leaving, the Wittenbergers handed Philip
memorial supporting their contention by quotations

from Hilary, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Irenaeus, TheZwingli, on his part, induced
ophylact, and Cyril.*
the Landgrave to remove the prohibition of his books
a
in
In other small ways, too, the conference
Hesse. ^
93
Bucer
94
De
to
A. Blaurer, Oct.
Wêtte,
95 Kessler,
iii.
325.
508.
i8, 1529,
Blaurer,
i.
197
f.
i6i
advanced the cause of union. The articles

Marburg formed the basis of the Confessio TetrapoUtana handed in by the South Germans
at Augsburg in 1530.
Perhaps the subsequent agreements, at Wiirttemberg in 1534 and at Wittenberg
two years later were in some way helped by the Marburg colloquy.''
But at the time the two parties seemed as far apart
as ever. While Zwingli spoke contemptuously of what
had been accomplished, Luther said that all union between them would be a pretence.'' The difference, he
thought,^ was greater than that which separated the
Eastern and the Western Catholics.
In November or December 1529, the Saxons theologians drew up a strong memorial advising their
leaders to have neither political nor other dealings
with the Swiss. An alliance might be made even with
indirectly
discussed at
the heathen,
it
was
as Paul, in Titus
heretics.
God and
The
said, but
iii,
not with the Zwinglians,
expressly
commands
us to shun
Zwinglians despise the clear word of
cannot be considered weaker brethren.
position quite consistent with this
the Lutherans at
Augsburg
in
was taken by
1530, when much was
conceded to the Catholics.

"God is my witness,"
wrote Melanchthon in August to the Emperor's preacher, Giles, "that I desire peace for no other reason so
much
as that I see,
to pass that
The
we
if
there
Schubert,
9^
Enders,
Z K.
viii.
not peace,
it
shall
come
shall be joined with the Zwinglians."
tenth article of the
96
is
G.. xxxx. 66
354.
98 Schubert, Z. K. G., xxx.

63.
99 Schirrmacher, 144 ff.
190 Schirrmacher, 247.
first
if,
77.
part of the Augsburg
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
62
1531, expressly condemns

teach that the body and blood of Christ are
Confession, as printed in
those
who
not truly present
in the
Lord's Supper/"^
It is
prob-
form of the Confession

the agreement of Lutheran and Catholic and the disagreement with the sacramentarians was still more
able that in the lost original
strongly stated."^
After the Marburg conference Zwingli's views underwent no essential change, though he perhaps became
a
His Fidei Ratio of
less intransigeant.
little
July,
1530, expresses the belief that the true body of Christ

is present by contemplation of faith, though not essenor really, and not in a manner allowing
tially
flesh-pots of
Egypt,"
similar spiritual
body
is
it
"and those who look back
eaten, as the papists
i.e.
to be
at the
the Lutherans, think."^
and sacramental eating of Christ's
maintained
in the
Fidei Christianae Expositio
ofi53i.'"*
Shortly after writing this Zwingli lost his
life in
the
1531) and Oecolampadius

Luther always insisted in
regarding their fate as a judgment of God, and a great
triumph for his own faction. Zwingli was damned for
his errors, said he, or, if God did save his soul, he did
battle of
Cappel (Oct.
did not survive
it
him
11,
long.
extra regulam}^
Of
Zwingli's death Luther said: "God's treatment
of our adversaries made clear to me at Coburg the

meaning of those words in the decalogue, 'I am a
For the punishment meted out to
jealous God.'
loiKidd, 264.
102
"Abendmahl," R. G.
io3Kidd, 473.
104 Ibid.,
44 f.
105 Smith, Luther,
289
ff.
G.,
i.
74.

them
is
not so cruel as our defence
is
163
Thus,
necessary.
they say, Zwingli has perished, whose error, had

prevailed,
church.
it
would have destroyed us along with the

The
It is a judgment of God
.
Zwinglians called
turn),' but
now
it
God
will
'a
God made bread
come
(impana-
to pass that he will be an
God to them. Oecolampadius called the Lord's

Supper [as celebrated by the Lutherans] the feast of
iron
Thyestes, a flesh-eating, blood-drinking, &c.
say to them
We
now
'Here you have what you have sought.

God once said that he would not hold him guiltless
who took his name in vain.' It was exceedingly blasphemous for them to call God 'made bread,' and us
^
flesh-eaters, blood-drinkers and God-devourers."
1^
Conversations
ivit/i
Luther, p. 14
f.
VIII.
SCHWENCKFELD
If the humanists
represented
in
general the con-
dogma of the real presence, the numerous

known collectively as Anabaptists were for
servative
sects
the
most part
liberals in this
regard/
It
was merely
because their other dogmas, considered by the ortho-
dox still more objectionable, cast this one into the

shade that they as a rule took no more prominent part
In the same year in
in the sacramentarian dispute.
which the colloquy at Marburg was held, another debate on the same question was ordered by the King of
Denmark at Flensburg.^ There, on April 8, 1529,
in his presence and in that of Prince Christian of
Norway, of the Provost of Reinebecke and of other
dignitaries, some Lutheran theologians, headed by
Bugenhagen, maintained the real presence against the
attacks of Melchior Hoffmann and other Anabaptists.
Hoffmann said that all who believed that the bread was
really Christ were false prophets. After an acrimonious controversy, one of the radicals, J. Hegge, confessed that he had been wrong.
A sectarian claiming independence of all parties was
Casper Schwenckfeld of Silesia. Though professing
to find the "Middle Way" between Catholics and
Protestants, in reality he had several points or resem^ One
author (P. Althaus: Zur Charakteristik der evangelischen
Gebetsliteratur im Reformationsjahrundert, 1914, pp. 26 ff) has made
the statement, incomprehensible to me, that the eucharistic prayers of
the Anabaptists are Erasmian and represent a Calvinistic view.
"^
Acta der Disputation zu Flensburg.
1529.
SCHWENCKFELD
blance with the Anabaptists.^
He
165
was precipitated
controversy by the publication,
the
in-
1524, by
Oecolampadius, of one of his letters containing some
to
anti-Lutheran views.
may
In brief these
His starting point was
as follows.
in
be described
a revolt against
the theory of the magical effect of the sacraments as

a means of grace, and an opus operatiim.
him, seemed an absurdity, and he refused to
This, to
call either
of the sacraments means of grace, though he said they

were serviceable to Christian living. So little stress,
however, did he lay upon them, that he said neither
baptism nor communion were necessary, and advised
his followers to abstain from the latter during and on
account of the battle that raged around the Lord's
table.
God, said he, could effect salvation without
external appliances.*
Quite consistently, Schwenckfeld rejected Luther's

doctrine of the real presence, which he called "im-
panation" or "Einbrotung
In 1525
vi verborum."
Schwenckfeld consulted his more learned friend Krautwald on this point, and was at first opposed by the
latter on dialectical grounds.
After three days of
prayer, however, Krautwald received a divine revela-
was
tion that Schwenckfeld
right.
Thus encouraged,
where he had an
the Silesian proceeded to Wittenberg,
interview with Luther.^
him, "It
be cast
in the
^
Shortly afterwards he wrote
impossible that the pope's
down
kingdom
Loetscher, 7 flF.
Loetscher, 9, 12
ii.
p.
shall
while this article of the flesh and blood
sacrament of bread and wine stands."
pondence,
s
is
30
ff,
367; R.
ff.
M. Jones:
Corpus Schivenckfeldianorum,
Enders, v. 277 f.
On
Strange
Schwenckfeld, Luther's CorresSpiritual Reformers, 1914, pp. 64 ff.

ii.
240
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
66
to say, he
was encouraged by
explanation for this that
his interview; the only
have found is offered by

the editor of the Corpus Schwenckfeldianoriim in the
phrase that "Luther wiped his feet on his own mental
reservation." The Wittenberg professor was in doubt
as to their relations, writing, as he did not long afterwards, "Either you or we must be the devil's bondsmen, because we both claim the words of God."
Like all those who have rejected the real presence,
Schwenckfeld had to find some strained exegesis of the
I
''
"Hoc
meum."
making "hoc" a
and construing, "My body
est
corpus
the words,
He
inverted the order of
"spiritual demonstrative,"
is this, scil. bread or true

nourishment for the soul."
But he still clung to a
spiritual element in the sacrament, and objected to
Zwingli's exegesis of "is" as "signifies" as too rational-
His
Luther did not improve with

In 1543 the reformer wrote him referring to
his eucharistic doctrine that "formerly he had kindled
a fire in Silesia which was not yet quenched and which
would burn him eternally." ^
istic.
relations with
years.
Loetcsher, 52.
SLoetscher, 50. Corpus Ref., xcv. 567
and Schwenckfeld, April 17, 1526.
^ Dec. 6, 1542, Enders, xv. 275 f.
ff.
Zwingli to Krautwald
IX.
BUCER
Martin Bucer seemed born to belie the saying that

peacemakers are blessed.
In his life-long effort to
reconcile the two main wings of Protestantism he
achieved only a slight and temporary success, while
he endured many hard rebuffs from each side.
No sooner was the tempest gathering in the writings
of Carlstadt, than Bucer began to pour oil on the
troubled waters. In a pamphlet published in December,
1524,^ he deprecated the quarrel over the sacra-
and evil, and said that it was much as

had given his sons a golden beaker as a
memorial of him, and then they did nothing but quarrel
over its material and cost.
At the same time he
showed his inclination to Carlstadt's opinion, though
rebutting his interpretation of tovto.
For the former
he drew down on his head Luther's wrath, in a manner
ment
as useless
a father
if
graphically described in his
Commentary on
the first
three Gospels.'^
In the preface to the fourth volume of Luther's Postilla, which
translated
into
Latin for the use of our
brethren in Italy,
said
all the works of the Lord were true, and as bodily things
always appeared what they were, then, did the Lord really and
truly turn the bread into his body, it ought thus to appear.
Luther
took this worse than I should have believed possible, and for this
cause published against me an epistle than which you will see nothing
that as
^
ii.
Grund und Ursach aus
gottlicher Schrift der
Neuerungen. Barge,
231.
2
Enarationum
in
Evangelia Matthaei, Marci
et
Lucae
libri
duo.
Luther's letter to Her1527, quoted. Corpus Ref., xcvi. 61, note 12.
wagen, Sept. 13, 1526, Enders, v. 384 S; Luther's Correspondence, ii,
377
ff-
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
68
more
filled with calumny and cursing.

When I wrote that the
corporeal miracles of the Lord always appeared corporeally to us,
he, carried away with impotent rage, omitted [in quotation] the word
.
was the whole force of my argument. Then

with great contempt and a bitter laugh.
If this
not to calumniate
or, shall I say? to rage
I know not what it
"corporeal," in which
he mocked
is
me
is.
Another attempt of Bucer to harmonize in a pamphof 1528, called A Comparison of the Opinion of
Luther and his Opponents on the Supper of Christ,
was judged by the Wittenberger as poisonous. As he
let
already knew Bucer's worthlessness, he said, he was

not surprised that he had dared to twist the meaning
of Augustine.
"Christ will plague these vipers," he
added, "and either convert them or give them what
they deserve."
who
He
commiserated
his correspondent,
lived at Strassburg, for having to dwell
among
such wild beasts, vipers, lions, and leopards, like Daniel in
the den.^
At Marburg Bucer played his usual vacillating part.

At a conference with Brentz and Osiander he admitted
that "Christ's body was in the supper and was given
with the bread to believers," but after a conference
with the Zwinglians he retracted this.* At the same
time he drew up a confession as a pendant to the
Schwabach
articles, in
the simple
words "that
which he professed to abide by

is my body."
As even Luther,
said he, confesses that the bread remains bread, and
rejects transubstantiation,
opinion that Christ
is
he cannot accept Luther's
with or
in the
bread.
At Augsburg he exerted himself more streneously

3 To Gerbel, July 28,
Enders, vi. 312
1528.
pondence, ii. 450 f.
4 Schubert in Z. K. G., xxx. 62 f
5 Schubert: Biindnis und Bekenntnis, 179.
f,
Luther's Corres-
BUCER
169
to further the union so necessary for the

protection
of the Protestants.
Although he wrote Briick that
Luther said the body of Christ was torn by the teeth
of communicants, he wrote Luther that, after
reading
Oecolampadius's Dialogue, he has come to beheve
there was no real difference between
its author and

Melanchthon, he said,
had digested their opinion into articles, which he sent.
Wittenberg Reformers.
the
The
substance of his contention was that Christ

is
in the supper to the mind but
not to the body.
Luther did not answer this appeal, Bucer visited
present
As
him
at
ment.
Coburg, and pressed him to consent to an agreeAt the interview, on September 18, Luther de-
clared himself content to say that the soul only

enjoyed
the heavenly food and that the mouth
ate only bread,
but he declined to entertain proposals for a

treaty with
the sacramentarians.^
Bucer insisted on sending him, nevertheless,

a confession in very conciliatory terms,
which Luther ac-
knowledged with approval and thanks, on January

22,
1 53 1, though he still declined to
admit a full union
with the other party.
When Bucer wrote insisting
that he believed in the real presence,^
Luther only
replied that of him personally he
entertained some
hopes, but not of the others.'
The
difficulties
confided to
were not
all
on one
Ambrose
side.
Bucer
Blaurer, on Feb. 21, 1531, that

though he hoped for union, he dared not mention it
to Zwingli, who was irritated by the letters
of certain
'Aug. 25, 1530, Enders,
viii.
209.
Baum,
Smith, Luther, 288 f.

Enders, viii. 355 ff.
Frosch, March 28, 1531, Smith, Luther,
289.
"To
473.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
170
persons and would not accommodate himself to any

union."
Luther's loudly expressed joy over the defeat of
Cappel and the death of

jects of
union easier.
Prussia, written
published
in
February or March,
immediately,
Zwingli's catastrophe
warned
his
In
make proDuke Albert of
his rivals did not
In a letter to
he
was
not
only
1532, and
affirmed
that
judgment of God, but he
the duke not to tolerate the sacramentarians
by which both
land,
damned and
his
own
soul
would be
the Christian church suffer a hard blow.
"For," he adds, in words that sound strange from an

Innovator, "we must not trifle with articles of faith so
long and unanimously held by Christendom." ^^
It is
not remarkable that
when
the clergymen of
Zurich were approached by Bucer, they replied that

they were perfectly willing to have Luther agree with
them, but that they had not yet been able to observe
Although they resented his letter to

would not attack him in pulpit
or in synod." On February 9 of the next year, however, Leo Jud wrote that they ought to attack Luther
as he erred not only on the sacrament but on other
that he did so.
Albert, they said they
articles.^*
So sensitive was Luther himself to any accusation

that he agreed with the Zwinglians that, when his
book On Private Masses against the papists was

thought to show that he did so, he promptly published
a letter to deny the impeachment.^^
^1
Blaurer,
12
Weimar, xxx, part
13
May
i.
To
the
Town
246, cf. 239.
iii, p. 547; Smith, Luther, 291 f.

Barge, ii. 595.
i*Kolde, Analecta, 204.
1^ Ein Brief D. M. Luthers von seinem Buck der fVinkelmessen,
JVeimar, xxxviii. 257 ff.
1534.
8,
1533.
BUCER
171
Council of Augsburg he wrote expressly to contradict

the claim of their clergy to agree with him, and to beg
the Council to forbid these ministers so to cheat the
people. ^^
Even Bucer confessed that Luther's rage against

all who differed with him was intolerable, that he cursed
the most pious men and those who had been most
and that no rocks were harder,
nothing more obstinate than some of his followers/^
useful to the church,^^
The
suggestion of the possibility of union, even in
came from
Concord of Wiirttemberg, Aug. 2,
1534, by the Zwinglian Ambrose Blaurer and the Lutheran Schnepf. This confession taught that the "body
and blood of Christ are truly, i.e. substantially and es-
these discouraging circumstances, perhaps
the signing of the
sentially, but
not quantitatively, qualitatively or locally,
present and exhibited in the Supper."
^^
Philip of Hesse was again the moving spirit of

harmony. On September 12, 1534, he wrote to Melanchthon that he has heard that the other would willingly see the schism on the sacrament taken away.
He spoke of the work of Schnepf in Wiirttemberg.^"
A few days later he proposed a meeting of Melanchthon and Bucer at Cassel.^^ Further negotiations with
Luther developed this plan and the meeting actually
took place in the last days of December. ^^ Luther
feared that Melanchthon would prove too yielding,
because he knew that his colleague had been much impressed by Oecolampadius' Dialogue showing what the
1^
August
!'
April
1^
To Margaret
"Kidd,
20
8,
9,
1533, Enders, ix. 331, Erlangen, Iv. 21.

1534, Kolde, Analecta, 205.
Blaurer, Aug.
305.
Gundlach, 65
flF.
21 Ibid., 68.
22
Enders,
x. 72, 78.
9,
1534, Blaurer,
ii.
809.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
172
Fathers thought of the Sacrament, which he had received at Augsburg in 1530. He accordingly examined
all the citations from the ancients which had shaken
his friend, and wrote an answer to each.^^
Further,
he drew up an instruction on the Supper to serve as a
basis of negotiation with Bucer.
tests
In this he
first
pro-
against the assumption that neither side under-
stands the other.
The
only alternatives are for his
opponents to concede that Christ's body
is
truly pres-
ent, or for him to admit that only bread is eaten,

which would be against his conscience and also useless.
It would be better, he says, for things to remain as they
are.
In strong terms he closes: "The body of Christ
is said to be truly held, given, received, and eaten in
the bread,"
and this not only by believers, but by
all who partake, whether worthily or not.
Luther had
little hope of union, and even preferred to differ with
people who denied that Judas ate the sacrament as
^'^
good apostles. ^^
But Bucer was determined
well as the
to
rather than give excuse for a

schism.
concede everything
continuation
of the
In his reply to Luther's memorial, he ac-
knowledged the real presence, even that the "body

was crushed with the teeth and swallowed." But yet
there was, he said, no physical union of body and
bread; otherwise the holy corpse would go to the belly
and be subject to the movements thereof.^'' Bucer's
M.
Lutheri super sententias patrum de controversia

a D. P. Melanchthone. Weimar, xxxviii. 294 ff.
2* Weimar, xxxviii. 298, Enders, x. 91 ff.
The German translation
of this memoir adds that the body of Chrict "is bitten by the teeth."
This is not in the Latin original, but was added from the Confession
of 1528, where Luther used the expression.
25 Forster to Schlaginhaufen, Wittenberg, Dec.
19, 1534, A. R. G.,
23 Glossae D.
coenae exhihitas
ipsi
vii. 73.
26
Dec. 28 or 29, Enders,
x.
105.
BUCER
language
173
document and in his negotiations with

a striking example of the tendency
of theology to hair-splitting. For Bucer exhausted the
vocabulary at his command to show that in the bread
Christ was really present and really not present; that
he was eaten by the mouth but not voided by the belly;
that the bread and wine were signs of things absent and
yet that they were the very things signified.
His sophistry, however, achieved the end he desired, for Luther at last declared himself in general
satisfied, though inclined to wait longer for a definite
agreement.^^
"I have now arrived at the point," he
in this
Melanchthon,"'
is
exclaimed
I
in a burst of generosity, "where, thank God,

can confidently hope that the ministers of Upper Ger-
many
and earnestly believe what they say." ^^

In April the busy Bucer went to Augsburg to inform
the clergy there that hitherto he had not sufficiently
understood the matter of the sacrament, for he had
taught nothing of the ofiice of the body and blood.
It
was then suggested by Neobulus that they should procure a preacher from Wittenberg to instruct them.^*'
They accordingly sent two of their number with a letter
to Luther, dated June 20, 1535, rehearsing the sad
history of the controversy from its inception by Carlstadt, speaking of the joy it had given the pope, and
sending a confession of the real presence.
The worthy
clergymen expressed their hopes of ending the schism
and requested that Urban Rhegius be sent to instruct
them in the pure doctrine of Wittenberg.^^
heartily
27BindseiI: Colloquia, ii. 47.

28 Enders, x.
124.
29 Smith, Luther,
292 f. Jan. 30, 1535.
^^
Baum,
31
Enders,
502.
x.
159
flf.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
174
Luther declared himself willing to

this condescension, delighted Bucer.^^
negotiation
^^
and, by
After further
treat,
the Wittenberg professor instructed the
Strassburg clergy in the niceties of his doctrine.
The
body and blood, said he, were present to be eaten and

drunk, but were not intended to be reserved or carried
in processions.
Whether the body was present in reserved hosts he declined to decide, saying that the
papists,
for
who were
given to the practice, must answer
It.'*
Sensitive as
from
difference
Luther was to the
ness of the South
own
German
slightest
shade of
opinion, the utter obsequious-
his
clergy,
who
prostrated their
private judgment before his infallible decisions, finally
convinced him that
would be safe to sign an agreement with them. A conference was therefore arranged at Wittenberg, and took place at the Black
it
May
during the days
Cloister,
21-29,
1536.
The
discussion was largely on the question of whether the

unworthy received the Lord's body and blood, for this
was considered the final test of the real presence.
Luther maintained that as the body was truly there, it
made no difference who ate It; Judas might partake as
well as Peter.
The Zwinglian doctrine had been that,
as the participation was an act of faith, only believers
might enjoy true communion with their Saviour.
made one of those fine diswhich he was an adept. Those, said he,
Bucer, at this conference,

tinctions In
with a glance at the Catholics,

stitution of Christ, did not
32
33
Bucer
to
Enders,
34 Enders,
A. Blaurer, Nov.
13,
x. 193, 237.
x. 272,
Nov.
27, 1535.
who
perverted the
in-
partake of the body and

1525, Blaurer,
i.
759.
BUCER
175
blood, but those in a lesser degree of unworthiness
might receive
it.^^
Agreement having
finally been reached, a document

Wittenberg Concord was drawn up by
Melanchthon and signed, on May 29, by all present
known
as the
The
save one.
doctrine of the eucharist
was expressed
words of Irenaeus,
that the eucharist consists of two things, an earthly and
a heavenly.
Thus we think and teach that with the
bread and wine the body and blood of Christ are truly
and substantially present, exhibited, and received."
Transubstantiation is denied, "nor do we think there
is a local inclusion in the bread or a durable
conjuncas follows:
tion
"We
confess, in the
outside the sacramental use."
So truly
the
is
body present, however, that even the unworthy are

said to receive
it.^^
new confession, Luther made sure,

by personal inquiries, that the councils of Augsburg
and Strassburg really accepted it." They assured him
Satisfied with the
that they did so, but yet dared not inform the people
far they had gone in the conservative direction.
how
Thus on July
6,
1536, Bucer wrote A. Blaurer that the
Concord was meant only to be signed by magistrates

and not scattered around among the people. ^^
While Protestant Germany was now united, Switzerland, with the exception of a few men,'^ held aloof.
Bucer did
his best,
with his leader.
though
When
35Buceri Opera anglicana,
Baum, 506
in vain, to reunite
his letter
p. 654,
them
also
proposing that Luther
quoted Enders,
66, note
12.
Cf.
ff.
36Kidd, 318.
^'^
2^
Enders, x. 342,
Blaurer, i. 806.
39
Joachim
xi.
i,
22.
Vadian wrote Aphorismorum libri sex de consideratione eucharistiae,. isiS, maintaining the Lutheran doctrine.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
176
should write to the Swiss about his agreement, arrived,
Luther said (August 25, 1536) "I know not what to

write. The Sacramentarians only seek a pretext from
:
my
letter,
not wishing to confess their errors and only
saying that neither side has understood the other.
But
not allow this proposition, for it would make me

guilty of not understanding their position.
Ah, Lord
I will
God,
have understood it only too clearly, otherwise

I have written against it so hard?
I will not load myself with others' sins.
There
can be no true concord because the sacramentarians
measure the matter by reason." *
On December 26, 1536, he wrote indignantly to the
burgomaster and town council of Isny, denying that
he had come to Zwingli's dogma of the sacrament.
If
I
why should
people say that, he avers, the Concord will turn into a
Let them boast what they like, higher knowlmore of the Spirit or of holiness than either
Luther or Paul possess, only let them not boast, the
writer warns them, that he has yielded to them.
For
his own part, his only doubts are whether some who
signed the Concord really believe it.*^
discord.
edge,
The
Swiss held a conference at Basle in January,
On Janu1537' to discuss the Wittenberg Concord.

ary 12 they wrote Luther that they considered the
sacrament a visible picture, a certain proclamation and
a holy sign of God's grace and promises, and not merely a sign, for the body of Christ is truly eaten, though
not substantially nor in fleshly wise.*^ About the same
time Capito and Bucer wrote Luther that the sacra-
ment was not salutary apart from

40 Bindseil, Colloquia,
*^
^2
Enders,
Enders,
ii.
xi.
45.
149, Erlangen, Iv. 194.
xi.
157
ff.
faith
and that the
BUCER
177
body of Christ could not be received
in men's bellies.*^
This opinion did not arouse the opposition that might
have been expected, for the Reformer wrote his fellow
workers of Strassburg that he believed they, personally, were sincere, but that they labored in vain with
others for "the Satan of Augsburg" was against them.**
A few months later his judgment of the Swiss became more favorable again, and, though he told Bucer
he liked their Basle Confession
less
than the Tetrapoli-
1537, that he was

pleased to find they agreed with the Concord.*^
tana,*^
he wrote them, December
2,
In 1538, not unfriendly letters were exchanged between Zwingli's successor, BuUinger, and Luther,*^ but
in the following year the old hatred flamed up again.
In his work On Councils and Churches, Luther accused
Zwingli of Nestorianism, because he failed to recognize the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, and
thus,
to Luther, made two natures of

The Zurich clergymen wrote at once denying
according
Christ.*^
charge against their late master, but the Witten-
this
berger never answered them.*^
After
this
Luther's relations with the sacramentar-
became steadily worse. In 1541 he heard that

the Bohemian Brethren denied the real presence and
he threatened to write publicly against their lies and
hypocrisy, but did not find time to do so.^
At the Conference of Hagenau in the same year the
ians
*3
Enders,
Enders,
^^ Enders,
*6 Enders,
**
MS
xi.
182
f.
xi. 247.
xi. 300.
xi. 294, Erlangen, Iv. 190.

Dated here Dec. i. But the
(original?) at Corpus Christi College, no. 119. 45, is dated Dec. 2.
*^
Enders,
xi, 363.
*^
Weimar,
49
Enders,
50
Kostlin-Kawerau,
vol. 50, p. 591.

241.
xii.
ii.
577.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
178
Catholic Legate Morone counted on a controversy

between Melanchthon and Bucer on the supper to turn
things to his
Two
own advantage. ^^
years later a petty but fierce quarrel arose in
the Saxon Church on the question of what

do with the bread and wine left over after communion.
On June 30 Simon Wolferinus, pastor of Eisleben, drew up ten theses stating that the sacraments
were divine actions and that outside of the act of participating "it was madness, rabid fury and monstrous
ignorance" to think that the bread and wine were still
sacramental. This aroused the wrath of the Wittenbergers.
Jonas blamed the rash asserter of private
judgment for not referring the question to Wittenberg before he had dared to pronounce on it. "You
know," said he, "that I am a disciple of the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther. I, who for twenty-two years have
conversed familiarly with Luther and Melanchthon,
am still wont to refer things great and small, especi^^
ally difficult matters, to Wittenberg."
Luther himself, in great embarassment to answer
the question, retorted that Wolferinus was a "ZwingMelanchlian" and "despiser of the sacrament."
the
bosom of
to
thon, said he,
had
present in the bread
truly written that
God was
not
except during the sacramental use,
but the question of putting the exact time limit on this

All he could say was that
real presence was difficult.
was an unprofitable question to discuss, and that a

decent time must be assumed to elapse after communion before, as it were, the body of Christ faded away.
it
5iPastor-Kerr,
^^Kawerau,
xi. 418.
in Z.
K.
G., xxxiii, 1912, 268
ff.
BUCER
He
179
therefore advised eating the remaining elements^
to avoid scandal.
^^
This, however, was a mere episode compared with
In June, 1543,
"The Zurich-
the continued battle with the Swiss,
Luther wrote to the Italian Protestants,

ers especially,
and
their neighbors, are enemies of the
sacrament and use profane bread and wine, from

which the body and blood of Christ are excluded; they
are learned in
all
tongues but of a
drunken, whose contagion
On
spirit alien to us;
to be shunned."
^*
hand Bullinger of Zurich was unwilapproach Luther when Frecht proposed it to

He knew, he said, that Luther would never
the other
ling to
him.
is
keep the terms of any treaty.
"He
has never ceased,
and privately, to condemn Zwingli and us.

We wrote him privately, as agreed, but he answered
nothing, despising and rending us
We know
that we cannot come into Luther's good graces and
concord, unless we deny Zwingli's doctrine and ours
about the Lord's supper, images, confession, and absolution.
I would rather die than to obscure or deny
the true and simple verity." ^^
The diffierences might, however, have been allowed
to remain unexpressed, had not the conciliatory efforts
of Bucer and Melanchthon fanned the flames of old
animosities to white heat.
Those gentlemen, in the
summer of 1544, drew up a Plan of Reform for the
recently converted city of Cologne, in which document,
to avoid altercation, they minimized the differences
of the several bodies of Protestants on the doctrine of
publicly
53
s*
^^
Enders, xv. 173 ff, 182.

Enders, xv. 167.
Vadianische Briefsammlung,
vi.
321,
May,
1544.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
i8o
As soon as he saw it Luther expressed

"The Plan of Reform does not
the eucharist.
himself as follows:
please me.
It
speaks at length about the use, fruit
and honor of the sacrament, but mumbles about the

substance, so that one cannot gather what it professes.
In short, I am sick and disgusted with the
which, besides other objections, is
book
much, much too long, a great tedious yarn, in which I
can see the hand of that chatterbox, Bucer." ^^ He
even planned a book against Melanchthon and Bucer.
"God forgive Luther and the Zurichers," wrote Bucer,
"for letting so dangerous a fire burn so fiercely.""
His refutation of the Plan of Reform, entitled A
Short Confessioti oti the Holy Sacrament, was pub.
lished in September.^^
It is
one of those ungovernable
outbursts of passionate anger characteristic of the Re-
former's declining years.
He
felt the
inner need of
giving this last terrible expression to his hatred of his

fellow-Christians in order to rid himself of the
of the Wittenberg Concord.
make
The
ranters,
a great palaver about spiritual eating
shadow
said he,
and drink-
murderers of souls. "As I am

about to descend into the grave," he averred, "I will
take this testimony and boast before the judgment seat
of my Lord, that I have always damned and shunned
the ranters and enemies of the sacrament, Carlstadt,
Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Stenckfeld [Schwenckfeld],
and their disciples." They have, he adds, a bedeviled
heart and a lying mouth.
No wonder that this was too much even for Luther's
ing, but really they are
56 Smith, Luther,
5^ Anrich, 95 f.
ss
p.
403.
Erlangen, xxxii. 396
ff.
Enders, xvi,
59.
BUCER
i8i
Melanchthon threatened to leave Wittenberg,^^ and said: "Should I shed as many tears as
there are waters in the Danube, my sorrow would not
be exhausted; should I make enough erasures to cover
the most fertile field in Europe, I could not heal the
wound, which had already been cicatrized, but which
Luther opened again with this his bitter book."
best friends.
In spite of this Confession there

sisting
even
Luther
legend
a legend, per-
Principal Lindsay's recent work, that
in
at the time of his
death was on the road to
union with the Swiss Protestants.

this
is
The ground
for
the fact that, during* his last days, he
is
Melanchthon that, in the new edition of his work

"That these words. This is my Body, still stand fast,"
he wished to omit the passage in which he had said that
the devil, through Bucer, had smeared Luther's books
told
This may have implied a wish to spare

His last sermons at Wittenberg and Eisleben denounce the sacramentarians,^
and in a letter, written a month before his death, he
with dung.
Bucer, but not the others.
says:^^
what you tell me about

me so vehemently, condemnan unhappy man of unhappy genius. This
sought, this is what I wished my book, so
"I greatly rejoice at
the Swiss writing against
me
as
what
ing
is
offensive to them, to do,

testify that they are
this and, as I
have
my
namely
make them publicly

now I have attained
The blessing of
at it.
to
enemies;
said, rejoice
Psalm is sufficient for me, the most unhappy of all

men: 'Blessed is the man who walketh not in the
the
59
vi.
A. Blaurer
to
Vadian, Sept.
24, 15+4,
Vadianische Briefsammlung,
348.
eo/Z-ii., 352.
61 Grisar, ii.
793
f.
Haussleiter: Die
*2 Smith, Luther, 405; Enders, xiii, 11.
Geschiclitliclie
Grunde, &c.
,:
'
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
82
counsel of the sacramentarlans, nor standeth in the way

of the Zwinglians, nor sitteth in the seat of the men of
Zurich.' "
And
''
Bucer, after
all his
gyrations, remained of his
"What kind of a real presence,"

opinion still.
he wrote Blaurer, "can the Lutherans imagine, when
they neither give it a place, nor include Christ in the
first
bread nor transmute the bread into Christ?" Twenty

years of argument and concession had not solved that
for him, but had only won him the dislike of the Zurich
pastors, who now, as he says in the same letter, are
unbecomingly attacking him with libels and lies.^*
63 Cf. Psalm
6* Feb. 25,
i,
i.
154s, Blaurer,
ii.
349.
MELANCHTHON
X.
'The ore dug by the miner's son was forged by the

son of the smith into useful articles of shining metal.'
Such is the tropical way of saying that Melanchthon
took Luther's ideas and put them into more consistent
form. Until 1531 his theory followed the same evolution as Luther's; after that date he became, timidly
and
secretly,
more inclined to the Zwinglian

Communes, published early in
view.
1521,^ he
emphasizes the early Lutheran doctrine of the imporNeither baptism nor participation in
tance of faith.
In his Loci
the Lord's Supper are anything, he says, in themselves,
but are merely witnesses and seals of the divine will
and benevolence. The error of holding the mass a

sacrifice and a good work is attributed to Aquinas and
is
refuted.
The
real presence
While Luther was absent
is
assumed.
Wartburg, Melentered with spirit into the reforms of

Zwilling and Carlstadt, being the first layman to take
communion in both kinds. When he did not have
Luther to lean upon, he took the fanatic Stiibner,
"clung to his side, listened to him, wondered at him and
venerated him." ^ At this time, January or early in
February, 1522, he drew up a memorial on the Supper.^
at the
anchthon
^ On the date, Supplementa

elanchthoniana, i, p. xvi.
in Spalatin's translation printed here pp. i86 ff; extracts
Kidd, 92
2
The
from
Loci
it
in
f.
Ulscenius to
Capito, Jan.
Correspondence, ii. 83.

3 A. R. G.J vi. 438.
i,
1522,
A. R. G.,
vi.
390;
Luther's
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
84
New
Testament
is nothing save rightrepugnant

to that righteousness of spirit,
Other things are free.
eousness must be abolished.
The opinion that the mass is a sacrifice is repugnant
to that righteousness, but ceremonies are not repugnant
As, says he, the
all
that
is
and may therefore be tolerated. It is a law to

commune under both kinds, but a law that can be dis-
to
it
pensed with in case of necessity or of scandal.

After Luther's return, Melanchthon at once acquiesced in the repudiation of all the reforms he had
helped to introduce.
Like Luther, he saw in the
Peasants' Revolt a divine punishment of land and
people for the abuse of the mass, "as
that
many
St.
Paul says
of the Corinthians were punished for the
abuse of the mass."
When
*
(I Cor. xi. 30).
Carlstadt started the controversy over the
real presence
Melanchthon wrote that he would be
He
neither the author of nor an actor in that play.
thought that no one would start such questions save

those who had nothing to do at home with weightier
matters of the law.
As he
cients taught that Christ
is
believed that
truly present he
all
the an-
would not
innovate in such a matter without a certain revelation.^
But he soon found himself much perplexed and had

To
to turn continually to Luther for assurance."
Blaurer he wrote that he was more tortured over the
question than he had ever been over anything.
He
does not see how the Zwinglian faction can persuade
He thinks
others, as it has not even persuaded itself.
it perilous to conscience to prepound new dogmas.
'^
Corpus Ref., xx. 641 ff.

^Melanchthon to T. Blaurer, Jan.
^Corpus Ref., i. 913; iv. 964.
^ June 20, 1529, Blaurer, i. 191.
23,
1525, Blaurer,
i.
118
f.
MELANCHTHON
To
another friend he said, "Not without the greatest
come
struggle have I
is
185
to hold that the Lord's
truly present in the Supper."
body
Later he said that
not a day or a night had passed for
which he had not thought on the

Luther's doctrine was the old one, a
many
years in
But as
good man would
subject.^
not rashly depart from the ancients.^"
His
Zwingli at
hostility to
burg, surpassing,
if
Marburg and
at
Augs-
possible, that of Luther, has al-
ready been narrated.

In April, 1529, he wrote
Oecolampadius, "I am not willing to be the author of
a new dogma in the church." "
He preferred to treat
the mode of the presence as a mystery "without subtlety," and again averred that he would rather die than
affirm with the Swiss that Christ's body could be present only in one place. ^^
At
same moment, however, when he was calling

would rather unite with the
Catholics than with the Zwinglians,^^ his opinion on
the point in controversy with them was shaken by
Oecolampadius's Dialogue on what the Ancients
God
the
to witness that he
thought of the Supper.

From this time on, slowly
and secretly, but unmistakably, he began to forsake the
doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body and the dogma
that unbelievers participate In
It
when they
receive the
bread and wine, and, finally, the Lutheran doctrine of

the real presence in any form. The Augsburg Confession in its lost, original form, was very nearly Catholic.
^
Corpus
Ref.,
9 Ibid., iii.
^Îbid.,
^^
^2 Ibid.,
^^
i.
Corpus
i.
1106.
537.
823, 830.
Ref.,
i.
1048.
Schirrmacher, 349.
Schirrmacher, 247.
ii.
25
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
86
In the form published in 1531, it stated that Christ's

body and blood were truly present and anathematized
In the edition of 1540
those who taught otherwise.
the former clause
was changed
to saying that the
body
communicant with
was struck out/*
The last years of Melanchthon's life were disastrous
both to his own peace of mind and to the unity of the
Lutheran church. The Augsburg Interim of May 15,
1548, decreed that the canon of. the mass should be
retained in its natural meaning, and that all its ceremonies should be retained.^^
Notwithstanding this external pressure the Protestants were unable to keep the peace among themselves.
Lutheran attacked Calvanist, and "Gnesio-Lutheran"
"Phillppist." In 1552 Joachim Westphal of Hamburg
took up the cudgels for the old, simon-pure dogma of
the real presence against Calvin, Peter Martyr, and
Melanchthon.
Christ, said he, was eaten "corporand blood were
really given to the
the bread and wine and the anathema
aliter,
dentaliter, gutturallter et stomachallter."
He
asked what would happen to a mouse if it ate the

Lord's body, and directed that the crumbs dropped
should be picked up with care. To such lengths was
the superstition carried that the fingers of a minister
who had
were
Melanchcut off by order of the Lutheran prince.^
thon was against such "remnants of the papacy" which
accidentally spilled the consecrated wine
named
he
"artolatry"
or
"bread-worship."
But,
though urged on by Calvin, he declined to express his

It was, however,
true opinion on the real presence.
a few years later, correctly reported to the Council
14
iJ. G. G., i. 76.

isKidd, 359 f.
16 Richard, Melanchthon, 363
f,
391; R. G. G.,
i.
77.
MELANCHTHON
187
of Trent by the Emperor's nuncio, Delfino, who wrote

that Melanchthon subscribed to the opinion of Calvin
on the eucharist, and that his followers regarded the

matter as an adiaphoron, or thing indifferent/'^ The
Emperor wished to support the Augsburg Confession
on this point against the sacramentarians. But in the
meantime Calvin's threat to write on this subject

against Melanchthon/^ was postponed by the colloquy
Worms
held at
in
1557.
The
theologians here tried
compromise in a manner that suited nobody. With

Melanchthon's consent they condemned the Zwinglians,^ while at the same time altering the Augsburg
to
Confession again to make
it
possible for Calvinists to
Notwithstanding his own vacillation in this

matter Melanchthon became more and more intolerant
of divergencies in others' belief. In 1557 he reckoned
sign
it.^"
the opinion that the bread and wine were
mere
signs
blasphemy which ought to be punished by death. ^^

Those who departed from the straight and narrow
path of Lutheran orthodoxy, not daring to avow their
as
opinions,
because
known
as
"Cryptocalvinists."
In
1558 Jonas estimated that hardly one out of a thousand preachers understood the dogma rightly.^^ Among
was imMelanch-
the Cryptocalvinists Melanchthon's son-in-law
prisoned for heresy by the Lutherans. ^^

thon's
1^
own
Aug.
10,
life
1562.
was made miserable and

Calendar of State Papers
at
death
his
Rome,
1916,
no.
184.
^^
19
Corpus Reformatorum,
Doumergue, 11. 558.
Kawerau, Agricola,
xlii.
342, Dec. 21, 1556.
Further
on
Melanchthon
and
Calvin,
1881, p. 348.
20Janssen,i6 jv. 25.

21 N. Paulus,
Luther und die Geivissensfreiheit, p. 47
a work of Melanchthon not in the Corpus Reformatorum.
22 Janssen,!^ iv.
25.
23 p. V^''appler: Stellung
des Kursachsens, p. 121.
ff,
quoting
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
88
perhaps hastened by chagrin
made upon him.

As nothing had been
at the ferocious attacks
settled at
Worms,
further con-
ferences, equally inconclusive, followed.
In 1564 the
debate at Maul-
Brandenburg theologians held a

bron.^* A strong Lutheran doctrine prevailed but the
question of the
mode
of the real presence agitated
The
the learned assembly.
doctrine of ubiquity
slurred over in the Interests of peace, only to
way
was
make
for a lively altercation on the communicatio idio-
matum. Karg argued against it by saying: "If an ass

were entirely and absolutely like a man he would be a
man and no ass and would not have any of the ass's
nature left."
His auditors do not seem to have resented this simile as a personal reflection upon them-
went on to thresh out the old and interesting

problem as to what happened to the Saviour's body
after it had passed into the eater's belly. They decided that the bodily part went into the "kitchen" of the
human digestion, but that "what was spiritually eaten
by the mouth went by faith into the soul's kitchen,
where there was a very different rule from that prevailing in the mortal body's belly and guts." The Calselves, but
vinists,
nevertheless,
revived the epithet "Stercoron-
Istae" to apply to Lutherans.
The
to
final collapse
of Melanchthon's, as opposed
came with the signing by 8,200
Luther's Ideas,
clergy, in
1577-80, of the Formula of Concord.
this all the least rational
Luther were
made
to
fixed.^^
reconcile
and
And
yet a desperate effort
opposltes.
In
least spiritual fancies of
was
The body and blood
are said to be substantially present, and "are eaten

24 E.
Schornbaum
in Z.
K. G., xxxiv. 378
ff,
491
ff.
MELANCHTHON
189
not only spiritually but by the mouth, nevertheless not

Capernaitically, but after a spiritual and heavenly
manner." ^^ The manducatio infidelium, the ubiquity

theory and the communicatio idiomatiim those "christological monstrosities" as Loofs calls them, are retained. The "high" doctrine is reasserted in the Saxon
The Philippists found
Visitation articles of 1592."
no more place in the Lutheran church, but became Calvinists.^
G. G., V, 915.
26Schaff: Creeds, iii. 137.
Ûbid., 186.
28 Moller-Kawerau, iii. 292;
25/?.
jR.
G. G.,
i.
77.
CALVIN
XI.
Calvin is the Aquinas of Protestantism; the philosopher and apologist of a certain system. He lived
before the age when it could have dawned on him how
very human and ephemeral that system was.
Like
many other philosophers he saw in the mere conventions of his age, in the ideas most dependent upon the
exact conditions at which civilization had arrived,
eternal truth. Like Aquinas and most religious thinkers, he had a bias for authority stronger than any
other principle.
For
doubt
if
there
is
in his vol-
uminous writings one original idea. And I do not

mean original in any very rigid sense, for, to the
searcher for "sources" it seems almost literally true
that there is nothing new under the sun, but I mean
that one cannot find in him any idea unsupported by
ample authority.^
As
in all
other matters, so in this of the Supper,
it
was
authority, not reason, from which he started.

Empiricism would have been repugnant to him; innovation blasphemous. He must get at the meaning of
the Bible as interpreted by the Fathers and as both
Bible and Fathers were interpreted by the Reformers.
For
a long time
^ doctrine
was near
it
was customary
that of Zwingli.
Of
thought nearer to that of Luther's.

1
on
On
to say that his

late
It
is
it
has been
ordinarily
Calvin in general: Smith: The Age of Reformation, i6o
his doctrine of the eucharist, pp.
165
f.
flf;
CALVIN
191
between the two. This last assertion,

reminds me of a story of a college
president who, when asked if he believed in God,
replied, "In that matter, as in others, truth lies between
the two extreme opinions."
In an alternative of that
said that
common
is
it
as
it
is,
nature there
is no middle point.
One must either
Luther that Christ's body is present in the
bread, or deny it, with Zwingli. The fact that Calvin
"^
affirm with
himself claimed to take this intermediate position does

not alter matters.
In this, as in his whole doctrine,
he was the heir of Bucer. He could and did reject
this and that corollary or argument of Wittenberg or
of Zurich; he could and did adopt the language now

now of the other, but on the main point at issue,
all that he could dp was to affirm contradictions: that
of one
the
body was present
in a sense
and absent
that the elements both represented (the absent) body

and exhibited (the present) body.
Like Bucer he
hoped that by making

by affirming with
distinctions sufficiently nice
and
ambiguity each of the mutually exclusive alternatives, he could really reconcile

sufficient
the two factions and produce a doctrine acceptable to

both.^
All he could do, as a distinguished historian
has said,^ was to disguise the division of opinion, and

produce a nominal unanimity by an ambiguous and incoherent jargon.
For he felt keenly the desirability of harmony

between the two Protestant churches.
He called the
strife over the supper shameful and calculated to
bring
into contempt.*
it
2 /J.
3
G. G.,
He
recounted the history of the
75.
Henry Hallam: Literature
Centuries 1863,
4
i.
of
Europe
in the
XV, XVI and XVII
p. 354.
Compendium
j^
in a sense;''
doctrinae de coena Domini, Corpus Ref. xxxvii. 681.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
192
altercation until his day.^
Luther, said he, left the
doctrine of the corporeal presence as he found it, and,

though he condemned transubstantiation, continued to
assert that the body of Christ was in a sense identical
with the bread. His similes to explain this were, Calvin thought, a little hard and rough.
Then came
Zwingli and Oecolampadius and, moved by the abuses
the devil had introduced into the mass and by the
idolatry of the host, denied too much, forgetting to
show that Christ was really present, and making the
elements bare signs.
Of the two opinions, he condemned the latter the more severely, as wrong and
pernicious, and he even blamed Bucer for sparing it."
Elsewhere he called the doctrine profane and spoke
of Zwingli's brave death at Cappel as a judgment of
God.^
His starting point, then, was Luther. In this he
T was moved
partly by his
own
the Saxon, of the need of

salvation, partly
by
feeling, akin to that of
some strong assurance of
his respect for the
authority of
Reformer and partly by desire

approval.
In this last he was partially
the
first
to
win
his
successful.
In 1539 Luther read the younger man's Response to

Sadoletus "with singular pleasure" and sent him his
greeting.^
It
is
commonly assumed
that Luther
was
pleased by what Calvin had to say about the Supper,
namely that the bread was a true communication of

the body of Christ but did not include it locally. Melanchthon also said that
his
master liked Calvin and,
^Petite Traicte de la Cene, 1541, Kidd, 630 ff CEuvres choisies, 97.

To Zebedee, May 19, 1539, Gilchrist, iv. 400 ff. Herminjard, v.
;
318.
7
R. G. G., V. 2257.
Enders,
xii.
260.
CALVIN
when some persons had tried
Genevan on the ground of
193
to excite
his
him against the
denial of the
"local
presence," had replied: "I hope that sometime

he will
think better of us, but it is right that
we should bear
something from this able spirit." '

little later, however, he expressed a very dubious
opinion of the Swiss
divine.
Speaking of Watt's book
against Schwenckhe said: "These books written to refute

others
need refutation themselves.
Thus Calvin hides his
opinion on the sacrament. They are mad
and cannot
speak out though the truth is simple.
Don't read
their books to me." ^
And when Calvin wrote him,
m January, 1545, he never received the letter because
Melanchthon, to whom it was first sent, refused
feld,
to
give
it
to his friend, fearing that
it
would make
trou-
ble.^2
Like the other Reformers Calvin rejected

the mass
as a sacrifice" and as a good work.
He admitted that
the ancient fathers called it a
sacrifice, but that was
only un fagon de parler.
In 1536 he expressed his doctrine of
the real presence as follows: "In the communion

of his body and
blood Christ witnesses and seals the fact that
he transfuses into us his life not otherwise than
if he penetrated
mto our bones and marrow." When we

receive the
symbol of the body and blood we must be
sure that
the body and blood also are truly given
to us."
To
support his theory that the body
Kostlin-Kawerau,
" Smith,
v^rf.^/ff"
XVI,
175 tt.
12
ii.
Luther, 402.
^'^- ""' ^-
really present he
577.
Autumn,
1540.
^" general, Doumergue,
So Melanchthon wrote Calvin April
17,
Corpus Ref., xxxiii. 448.

^Înstutio, 1536, cap. xvii, Kidd,
p. 534.
'^'^
is
ii.
562
ff.
1545; Corpus Ref.,

' '
Enders
xl, 61.
>
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
194
quotes Tertullian's refutation of Marclon's heresy that

Christ was only a phantasm; this could not have been
argued Tertullian, because the bread which
so,
figure of his body,
is
is
the
real."
dogma never really developed, but his language bloomed. When, in the course of five years,
Calvin's
he again spoke at length on the Supper,
pand
it
was
to ex-
words
meaning
his original statements in a vast cloud of
which it is more difficult to detect their

and therefore their self-contradictions. In a different
sense from that meant by Talleyrand, his language
in
was made
Not
to conceal thought.
that he intended
was obliged to cover up

and deck out with his famous style the inconsistSo, after wading through exencies of his system.
panses and depths of words in the Institute of 1541^
or in the Treatise on the Supper" of the same year,
to deceive in the least, but he
that
all
we
arrive at are such equivocal statements as
the following: "In the Supper
Christ
his
is
is
is
so incorporated in us
ours and
all
ours
is
and
yet
it is
recognize that Jesus
and we
his."
the food of our spiritual
faith
we
him that all

The body of Christ
life.
It
is
in
eaten only by
a desperate folly not to recognize in
the bread and wine a communion of the body and

blood of Jesus Christ. The body of Christ does not
descend to us, but the Supper Is a "canal or conduit"
by which all that Is Christ's descends to us. The Word
is
our bread, and so is the Supper.
In a letter
"In the Supper is not only
to VIret he says:
figured but actually exhibited that
15
16
Disputation at Lausanne, October, 1536,

Ed. Lefranc, pp. 625 ff.
17
CEwvres choisies, 63
flF.
communion which
ibid.,
551.
CALVIN
we have with
individually,
stance."
^^
"We
Christ," and,
with Christ,
Through
all
195
are thus united, each

one body and one sub-
in
this
maze
contradiction one thing at least

is still
is
of rhetoric and
clear,
that Calvin
putting the question of the relation of the heav-
Nothing
enly to the earthly element in the eucharist.
more medieval than
is even
Dr. McGiffert says, that Calvin was, in this
respect, more Catholic than Luther.^"
No question is
is
this/^
In a sense
it
true, as
answered as long as it can be sincerely asked.

between Aquinas and Calvin on the one
side and rationalists and many modern Protestants, on
the other, is not that they give different answers to the
really
The
difference
question of the real presence, but that to the latter the
question itself seems absurd.

Calvin, though unable, as
was
under the ^
inevitable
circumstances, to advance any theory of the
mode
of
union of the heavenly element with the earthly, was

quite able to criticize all previous attempts to eluci-
Thus he
date this problem.
rejected with justified
surety transubstantiation and Luther's ubiquity theory.
No
property can be assigned to Christ's body, he
sagely observes, that

true humanity.^^
inconsistent with the nature of
is
To
be truly present, says he,
it
is
not necessary that Christ should be included in the

bread, which would give him two bodies. ^^
He
also
avoided many of the absurdities of the Lutherans by

confining the enjoyment of the
18
Aug. 23, 1542, Gilchrist,

19/?. G. G., i. 75.
20 Protestant Thought
21
22
183.
i.
345
body
to the predestinate.
f.
before Kant, 93.

Walker, 423. R. G. G., i. 75.
Ultima Admonitio ad Westphalum, 1557, Corpus
Ref., xxxvii.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
196
This dispensed with the necessity of asking that difficult and burning question as to what would happen to
a mouse who ate his God.
In all this, is evident not
the greater consistency and rationality of Calvin's theory, but the greater cleverness of his prestidigitation.
The body
well,
it is
mouse or
it
is
needed as a pledge of salvation. Very

But suppose a
if you are elect, eat it.
sinner gobbles up the body? Impossible;
is
there;
a
not there.
Presto,
moment
it
is
gone, only to return in
own jaws
close
on the
the effect and need of the sacrament
Calvin
a flash the
Calvin's
wafer.
On
was much
and for the reason that, like Luther,

he really felt the imminence of judgment and the longing to be saved.
"None," says he, "can escape from
clearer,
eternal death.
If
we
are not asleep or stupid this
horrible thought must be a perpetual gehenna to vex
and torment us." ^^ But we are freed from it by

God's grace, and the bread is the vehicle of this
If he asks how, he again falls into the old
grace.
perplexity.
The benefit is not wrought by the sacrament itself, but infallibly accompanies it when received
by the predestinate.^* In other words: I never play
baseball for money; I merely accept a present from the
management on the days I happen to play.
Calvin's path had been broken for him by Farel,
a more sensible and down-right person. "Why," wrote
Farel to Bugenhagen
October, 1525,
in
"Why
should
we fight for a bit of bread which the Father gave us

when he gave us his Son?" If we are saved by faith
only, he adds, bread, a
23
24
mere external
Tratcte de la Sainte Cene.

Walker, 442.
thing,
is
not nec-
CALVIN
197
At the Bern Disputation of

1528 the Fourth Thesis^" said, "It cannot be proved
from Scripture that the body and blood of Christ are
substantially and corporeally received in the eucharessary to redemption.^^
The
ist."
Fifth Thesis declares that the mass as an
offering for sins of the
dead and living is contrary to

blasphemous and an abominable abuse."
Scripture,
It
was Farel, the
evangelist of French Switsecured the abolition of the mass at
who
zerland,
first
Bex in 1528.^^ In 1530 he tore the

host from the priest's hands at Valangin, and said to
Aigle, Ollon and
the people, "This

ship; he
"
Fath
to
is
above
is
not the
in
God whom you must
heaven,
in
wor-
the majesty of the
29
Not many years after this the Reformation began

make headway in France. On the night of October
Antony de Marcourt posted throughout
number of placards attacking the mass. He
17-18, 1534,
Paris a
proclaimed that Christ's
sacrifice
could not be repeated
and that the wretched mass had plunged the world

into idolatry.
The papists, said he, were not afraid
to say that rats, spiders and vermin partook of the
Lord's body if they ate a bit of the bread, as is written in their missals in the twenty-second rubric. Though
he admitted the real presence he denied transubstantiation.'^"
At Geneva mass was abolished on August 10, 1535,

though not without fears that the people would mut25V0gt, 50.
Lindsay, ii.
27Kidd, 460.
2
28Kidd, 482,
29Kidd, 483.
soKidd, 529
52.
502.
ff,
Smith:
The Age
of the Reformation, 197.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
198
On December
iny.^^
24,
1536, Bern issued an edict
for the reformation of the Pays de Vaud, alienating the
on foundations for masses and vigils. ^^

A few weeks later (January 13, 1537) the ministers
of Geneva, including Calvin, presented to the Town
Council a memorandum on the correct doctrine of the
Supper, which is called a true participation in the
body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in his death, life,
spirit, and all his goods.
The ordinance of the supper
is stated to be the breaking of bread and the mass to
be an abomination. Bread and wine are called "figures
and sacraments of the body and blood of our Lord."^^
The new ecclesiastical constitution of Geneva,
denounced the mass and provided for com1 541-2,
munion once a month. Before partaking it children
must make a profession of faith. ^* Those who did not
renounce the mass were punished.^^ The liturgy of
1542 said that men saw only bread and wine in the
elements, but that through them God fulfils and perfects all which is shown forth outwardly in these visible signs, for he is the celestial bread which nourishes
money
settled
to eternal life.^^
tifies
the
real
The Geneva
catechism of 1542 cer-
presence and declares that Christ
is
eaten internally with the mind."

Efforts to unite the whole of Protestant Switzerland
were successful in the Consensus Tigurinus, drafted
by Calvin and BuUinger in 1549. Chapter 22 of this
document states that the words "This is my body" are
This conto be taken only figuratively, not literally.
3iKIdd, 515.
^Îbid., 537.
^Îbid., 561 ff.
34Kidd, 597.
35Kidd, 632.
36Kidd, 625 ff.
s^Kidd, 611 ff.
CALVIN
199
was offset by emphasis placed

upon the gift of salvation in the eucharist. Besides
Zurich and Geneva, the Consensus was accepted by
Basle, Bern and a number of other cantons. ^^
All approaches of the Lutherans were rebuffed. In
June, 1550, Calvin was so exasperated that he called
the Lutherans "ministers of Satan" and "professed
enemies of God," seeking to bring in adulterine' rights
and vitiate the pure worship of God,^^ BuUinger also
wrote Calvin that the "Lutherans were an obstinate
and pernicious race of men, without judgment or humanity, persecuting us more violently than the papists
themselves." ^
Blaurer informed Bullinger that the
Saxons said they would rather fight with the Calvinists
cession to Zwinglianism
than with the Turks. *^
In the matter of the sacrament
said Schenck, the error of the papists
is rather to be
borne than that of the Saxons,*^ It was a moot question
whether a Calvanist could receive the sacrament at
from
all
The
a Lutheran.*^
went merrily on for many years after

In a disputation between the two parties in 1596, J. Parsimonius wrote that the body of
Christ was present in all places and in all creatures,
battle
Calvin's death.
not only in the elements of communion but in every

stock and stone,
pears, cheese
"in air, fire
and beer."
The
and water,
in
apples,
Calvinists replied:
"The
Lutheran cyclopean god-gobbling (Herrgottsfresserei)

is from the devil no less than the filth of papal hosts
and all devil's dung." The Rostock professor J. AfssKidd, 656; Lindsay, ii. 60; R. G. G.,
33 To Paceus, Corpus
Ref., xli. 591.
ôin 1554, Corpus Ref., xliii. 138.
^1
Blaurer,
iii.
^^ Ibid., 4CXJ,
*3
i.
369, July 10, 1556.
August
30,
1557.
Blaurer to Calvin, Corpus Ref., xlvi. 539.
77.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
200
felmann wrote "Sturm has compared the words of the

Supper in their Hteral meaning to a snailshell and a
snail's dirt and slimy dung and has written of us that
we do not eat the body and blood of our Lord but that
we crush snailshells with our teeth and swallow snail's
dung." **
When the Calvinists came to power in Hesse in
1600 they abolished the wafers used in communion be:
cause the people believed them the body of Christ
and substituted for them heavy, hard round crackers,

baked from the coarsest flour, to convince the people
that they had "bread, bread, and nothing but bread."
"The cursed wafers,"
Roman
said they, "are a birth of the
Antichrist," and one of
them derived the word
host from the Latin os porci, pig's mouth.*^
What was
words, of
all
the result of this long, long battle of

these discussions and arguments, of
all
hatred and bigotry centering around the Lord's
this
The answer must be that it did not, directly,

advance the cause of truth one whit. Sturm and Lazarus in 1600 were no nearer squaring the circle than
were Luther and Carlstadt in 1524. The more ration-
table?
al spirits, Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius, had

been crushed and were anathematized by Lutherans
and Calvanists alike. As in the Roman Church, so in
the'
Protestant, purely internal forces consistently
made
for reaction, ecclesiasticism, intolerance, and superstition.
Protestantism became, as Dr. McGiffert
**^
has
repeated after Harnack, "as blighting to intellectual
growth
as
Roman
**Janssen,i6 vi 516
^Îbid., s^Z
^^
f,
Catholicism at
ff.
546.
Martin Luther,
1911, p. 382.
its
worst."
CALVIN
The
them
The
20
weakened
Years war weakened Germany.
internecine wars of the Protestants
as the Thirty
benefit accrued partly to
skepticism.
Catholicism, partly to
The former foe was the only one they
Thus as early as 1530, Queen Margaret

of Navarre wrote to the Strassburg clergy that the
schism caused great scandal in France.*^ Twelve years
envisaged.
later the Protestants of Italy
wrote Luther: "There
is
a second thing which threatens the daily destruction
of our churches.
It is that question
Supper, which
first
carried to us.
Alas,
cited
much
it
How many
offense
it
dissentions
it
is it
4^
Baum,
48
Nov.
to the spreading
472.
How
What damage
What an impedi-
abroad of Christ's glory."
Bucer to Luther, Aug. 25, 1530, Enders,

Enders, xv. 25 flf.
Cf.
26, 1542,
has caused
has given to the weak!
has done to the Church of God!
ment
about the Lord's
Germany and was thence

how many commotions it has ex-
arose in
viii.
^'^
209.
THE BRITISH REFORMERS
XII.
England, though she has to her credit perhaps even

scientific discoveries and inventions, has usually been content to take her theology
and philosophy from the European continent. At no
time was this more true than at the Reformation.
Not the slightest originality was shown in the formula-
more than her share of
dogma
tion of any
eucharlst,
views were
or reform.
Zwinglian
Lutheran,
the
all
In the article of the
and
Calvlnlstic
represented in England; and their evo-
lution In all respects paralleled that of
German and
Swiss doctrines.
own views were represented with great acwho visited him at WittenOne
berg and then returned to their own country.
Luther's
curacy by the Englishmen

of these was
Robert Barnes, who, prior to 1531,
drew up
a series of Principle Articles of the Christian
Faith.^
The
Seventeenth Article, on the Sacrament of
the Altar, reproduces the Lutheran doctrine exactly,
supporting
it
by quotation from the Bible, from the

The author, an
Fathers and even from Erasmus.
Oxford doctor of
ing, but
no
divinity,
originality, for
shows considerable learn-
he sticks close to his models,
Schwabach and Marburg.

In the latter part of 1535 Henry VIII sent an em-
the Articles of
Erstlich in
^Fiirnemlich Artikel der ChristUchen kirchen
Lutein durch D. Antonium aus Engllandt zusammen gebracht, nenulich
mit einer vorred Joan. Pomerani verdeutscht, 1531. On Barnes see
P. Smith: "Englishmen at Wittenberg in the i6th Century," English
.
Historical Review, July, 1921.

bassy to Wittenberg, consisting of
Edward
203
Fox, Bishop
and Nicholas Heath, Archdeacon of

Their instructions were to treat with the
Schmalkaldic princes about political union and with
the Wittenberg theologians about its then indispensable
Especially they were
basis, confessional agreement.^
to get from the Reformers a favorable opinion of
the king's divorce, and were to request Melanchthon,
to whom they brought a large present, to come to
England.^ In both these particulars they were unsuccessful; but they took back with them a series of
Articles, drawn up by Melanchthon from previous conof Hereford,
Stafford.
fessions.*
real
Of
these articles the sixth declares for the

the eighth defines
presence,
"sacrament" as a
means of grace by which God works invisibly in us;

the twelfth and thirteenth are on the order of "mass"
and on giving the cup to the laity.
In order to impress the English visitors with the
reformed doctrine of private masses, a special debate
on the subject was held
on January 29,
Luther answered all
at Wittenberg,
1536, for their benefit.
At
It
He
their questions, to their complete satisfaction.
ceded that the public mass might be called a
con-
sacrifice,
but objected strenuously to the private mass.^
Returning to England Fox immediately put the

Articles in
2
On
P.
this
good
use.
embassy
They formed
the basis of the
general, English Historical Revieiv, 1910,

688 ff. Merriman: Life and Letters of T. Crom-well, i.
372.
3 Merriman, i. 419.
The present to Melanchthon of 5CX) gulden,
brought by Fox and Alesius, mentioned in a letter from A. Musa
to Roth, Dec. II, 1535, printed in G. Buchwald: Zur
JVittenberger
Stadt und Universitdtsgeschichte, 1893, p. 113.
4G. Mentz: Die IVittenberger Artikel z'on 1536. Leipzig, 1905.
The judgment on the divorce, Corpus Ref., ii. 527, wrongly placed in
1531-
Drews, 69
ff,
in
English Historical Reviein, 1921,
p.
425
f.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
204
Man, 1537, and of the Book

of Articles of Faith and Ceremonies handed in by him
Institution of a Christian
Convocation on July 11.

When the Saxon and Hessian ambassadors, Boyneburg and Myconius, went to England in May, 1538,
they took the Wittenberg Articles with them and held
a conference on them with three English bishops and
four doctors, the result of which was a confession of
Thirteen Articles, which agree often, though not always, with their source, word for word.^ On the other
hand a "minority report" as it would be called today,
was drawn up by Cuthbert Tunstall, and handed to
to
Henry VIII, who
revised it/
So important was it considered at this moment to

have Luther's authority that a set of spurious articles
attributed to him were circulated in England; he later
issued a formal repudiation of them.^
During these early years of the English Reformaview was set forth, though without
calling it by that name, by William Tyndale.
His
tion the Zwinglian
Brief Declaration of the Sacraments,

of 1536, expressly affirms that the "sacraments are bodies of
^'^
and there is none other virtue in them

than to testify and exhibit to the senses and understanding the covenants or promises made in Christ's
stories only;
blood."
Faith
in the
only method by which they can
^Wilkins: Concilia Magnae Brittanniae, iii. 803; Smith: The Age

of the Reformation, p. 301.
^Reprinted by Jenkins: Remains of T. Cranmer, quoted by Mentz.
8 Henrici VIII
contra Germanorum opiniones de utraque
specie, de missa privata et de conjugio sacerdoium.
MS of Corpus
Christi College, Combridge, England, no. 109. i.
The same printed
from another MS in Burnet-Pocock: The Reformation, iv. 373.
^Vêimar, xxxviii. 386.
1 Treatises, publisher by Parker Society,
345 ff. A Brief declara.
tion of the sacraments, expressing the fyrst originall hoiv they came
up .
Compyled by the godly learned man JVyllyam Tyndall.
.

Of
be utilized.
them, the
"body
first,
the three opinions held concerning
transubstantiation and the second, (Lu-
that the bread
theran)
is
205
is
not changed but that the
The
there presently" are rejected.
truth
is
my body
broken for
you" oblige us to believe only that Christ's body was
broken for us and not that the bread was his body.
Both Lutheran and Zwinglian heresies were crushed
by the Act of the Six Articles, ^^ in 1539, which made
denial of transubstantiation punishable by death, and
declared for communion in one kind, for sacerdotal
celibacy, for private masses and for auricular confession.
The Catholic view of the sacrament was defended by R. Smythe."
When the Reformation again advanced, under the
Reign of Edward VI, it assumed a distinctly Bucerian
and Calvinistic turn. Bucer was at Oxford, busy drawing up formulas and liturgies.
Coverdale translated
Calvin's Treatise on the Sacrament (1546).^^ Other
works of Calvin and of Bullinger began to appear on
the subject.^*
In fact the English church became
said to be that the
words
"this
is
Calvinistic in doctrine.
The
general adoption of this variety of opinion was
accompanied by a vigorous repudiation of Luther's

theories. Thus, on June 19, 1548, John Hooper wrote
from Zurich
I
entreat
to Bucer:
my
you,
master, not to say or write anything against

charity or godliness for the sake of Luther, or to burden the con^^ 31 Henry VIII, cap. xli.
^2 The Assertion and Defense
of
the
sacraments
of
1546.
Compyled and made by mayster Richard Smythe.
the
He
aulter.
was. an
Oxford don.
13
1*
M. Coverdale's Works, ed. Parker Soc.

Tiuo Epystles, one of Henry BuUynger
an other of John
Caluyne
ivhether it be laivfull for a chrysten man to communicate or be a partaker of the masse of the papysts, without offending God and hys neyghbour or not. London. 1548.
.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
2o6
sciences
men with
of
his
is
now no
Ahhough I
him who
words on the holy supper.
readily acknowledge with thankfulness the gifts of
more, yet he was not without his faults
God
in
After the
dispute with Zwingli and Oecolampadius respecting the Supper had
begun
.
to
grow warm he did
many passages
violence to
that he might establish the corporeal
the bread
Everyone
is
aware,
too,
of Scripture
presence of Christ in
with what calumny and
reproaches he attacked even the dead.^''
The Protestant Bishop Horn In 1576 called Lutheranism a great disturber of Christianity;" William
Turner, Dean of Wells, classed Lutherans with wolves,
papists, Sadducees and Herodians, and Archbishop
Grindal called them "semi-papists." It has been conQueen Spenser pilloried Lutheranism as the "false image" of Una, the English
church."
In 1597 Hooker said:
"So they do all
jectured that in the Fairy
plead God's
omnlpotency
patrons
the
of
and the followers of consubstantiation, or kneading up of both substances as

^^
it were into one lump."
When Captain Henry Bell
translated Luther's Table Talk (1652), he persuaded
the committee of the House of Commons appointed to
examine it that it was "an excellent divine work, worthy
of light and publishing, especially in regard that
transubstantiation
Luther, in the said discourses, did revoke his opinion,
which he formerly held, touching Consubstantiation

the Sacrament."
^^
There
is,
in
of course, nothing to
purpose in the German Tischreden; whether Bell

forged a passage or merely informed the committee,
this
15
'^^
Original Letters, i. 46.

Zurich Letters, i. 321. ~
"Padelford, 26
f.
1^ Ecclesiastical Politry, V, Ixvii, 10.

19 Colloquia Mensalia, of Dr. Martin Luther, translated
tain Henry Bell. London. 1652, Bell's prefatory letter.
^^ True Religion (1673), Works, 1851, 409.
by Cap-
207
contrary to the truth, that Luther had revoked his
former error, I have not had leisure to determine.

In one place he did tamper with the original so far
as to introduce the name of John Calvin among Luther's list of the saved.
Twenty years later Milton expressed the opinion that "the Lutherans hold consubstantiation; an error, indeed, but not mortal."
Cardinal
Allen
was
fairly
safe
in
saying
that
the Protestants "denied that the sacraments gave grace
and that Christ was present on the
altar."
Cranmer,
we have
^^
indeed, wavered, at one time stating that "as
God verily incarnate for our redemption, so should we

have him impanate." ^^ But he confesses later to have
changed his opinion, ^^ and to believe that Christ was
only present in the Supper in the same sense as he was
present at baptism,^* and that evil men do not eat his
In his Defence of the True and Catholic
body.^^
Doctrine of the Sacrament (1550), he defended the
view set forth in the Prayer Book, that there was a
real presence in "the godly using of the eucharist, but
that this was spiritual and not corporeal.^
In the Calvinistic sense, the English Reformers
maintained the real presence. That is, they called the
words "This
is
my body"
a trope,-''
and denied "cor-
poreal presence" or any transmutation of the elements;

while they diligently asserted that the heavenly bread
was, nevertheless, food for the soul which truly
21
In 1565;
M.
Haile:
An
1914, p. 66.
^^
23
Defence (1550), 33a.

Works, ed. Parker Soc,
^^ Ibid.,
I.
ii.
217.
76.
25 Ibid., i.
29.
26 Pollard:
Political History of
27
made
Elizabethan Cardinal, fV. Allen. London.
England 1547-1603,
Archbishop Grindal, Remains,
ed.
p.
Parker Soc, 195
51.
ff.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
2o8
believers a part of Chrlst,^^
and that the body was In

and that, though the
a true sense spiritually eaten, ^^
elements are merely signs, yet they really nourish the

soul with Christ.^"
All the English Reformers rejected the sacrifice of

the mass, though they
away
had no
cal the
sacrament so ernestly a
ado to explain
wyth one accorde
little
the fact that "al the doctours
sacrifice."
They could
not otherwise understand them than as meaning that
memorial of Christ's sacrifice. That

is proved by Christ's words at
the passover, "I will no more eate of it henceforth tyll
the sacrament
really
is
no
it
is
it
be fulfylled
sacrifice
in
the
kyngdom of god."
^^
Christ's
oblation on the cross was, in fact, "omni-sufl^cient."
^^
In like manner the "high mass" was declared to be a
"low abomination," ^^ and of course private masses

were anathematized. In order to indicate their detestation of the Catholic doctrine, in Mary's reign some
Protestants took a cat, shaved its head, dressed it like
a priest, and hung it in a conspicuous place in London
with a wafer in its mouth. ^*
The Thirty-nine Articles of Elizabeth, based on Edward VI's Forty-two Articles, which in turn were
largely drawn from the Wittenberg Articles of 1536,
take a rather more conservative position than do most
of the doctors just quoted.
Article 28 reads:
"The
Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of

Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking
28
R. Hutchinson, Works, ed. Parker Soc, 209 ff.

Beacon: Catechism, ed. Parker Soc, 228 ff.
30 J. Jewel: JVorks, ed. Parker Soc, ii. 1121; J. Bradford, Writings, ed. Parker Soc, 82 ff.
3iTyndale: Brief Declaration of the Sacraments.
32 Preface to the Tivo Epy sties of Bulling er and Calvin, 1548.
33
J. Jewel: JVorks, ii. 625.
î Diary
of H. Machyn, ed. J. G. Nichols, 1848, p. 59.
29

of the Blood of Christ."
209
Transubstantiation
Is
de-
clared to be repugnant to Scripture and the occasion of
many
superstitions.
after a spiritual
The body
of Christ
is
eaten only
and heavenly manner. It is stated

is not, by Christ's ordinance, re-
that the Sacrament
served, lifted up, or worshiped.
As
is the most unchanging portion of religEnglish Prayer Book keeps many of the old
liturgy
ion, so the
Catholic words, explained, at the time of

in a
new
sense.
prayer
in the
its
adoption,
Communion
Service
speaks of "eating the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus

Christ and drinking his blood in these holy mysteries."
made in the following words: "We do

celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty,
with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto
An
oblation
is
memorial thy Son hath commanded." "Acour sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving."
"Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy
and living sacrifice unto thee." ^^
Taking the communion in the established church became the test of orthodoxy, and was accordingly enjoined by law.
Even members of other bodies were
compelled to do it occasionally. A very singular compliance with the law was allowed, in that the communion was at times permitted to be vicarious, one man
taking the bread and wine for another.^^
The divines of the Anglican Church continued to
maintain the real presence, though they showed an increasing consciousness of its difficulties. Thus, Jeremy
Taylor, in his tract on the Real Presence of Christ in
thee, the
cept this
^^ Prayer Books: Communion.

Practically the same in the editions
of 1549, 1552, 1662, and in the Scotch Liturgy of 1637; Tabular Vieiv,
p. 52.
36 Frere, for
period 1536-75.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
210
the Sacrament, wrote: "It
when
she, in this article,
was happy for Christendom
maintained the same simplicity
which she was always bound to do;

that is,
to believe the thing heartily and not to inquire curiously."
While devoting most of his space to argument against transubstantiation he asserts that "the
symbols become changed into the body and blood of
Christ, after a sacramental, that
real
after a spiritual
is,
^'^
manner."
The
dissenting churches mostly followed the lead of
Calvin
The
in asserting a real presence.
made by
revision of
Synod of WestPresbyterian
body
in 1647,
practically
a
minster
after declaring against the dogma of the sacrifice and
the Articles of Religion
transubstantiation,
against
the
says:
"Worthy
receiv-
outwardly partaking the visible elements in this

sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and
indeed, yet not carnally nor corporeally, but spiritually,
ers,
and through
receive
and
faith feed
upon Christ crucified

The unworthy are
all the benefits of his death.
said not to receive his body.^^
The
of the Scotch Reformation, late and ex-
spirit
treme, was that of Calvin, and
its
representative
was
In 1555 he was
journ at Geneva, preaching passionately against the
mass.
Four years later he had the satisfaction of
John Knox.
in Scotland, after a so-
seeing "the priests

to desist
37
In
vols. 9
benefits
from
their
commanded, under pain of death,

blasphemous mass."
^^
In a decree
The
Vl^hole Works of Jeremy Taylor, ed. R. Heber, 1839,

tract entitled "The Worthy Communicant," on the
of the eucharist and the proper manner of receiving it, is
and
ro.
found in volume
15.
38Schaff: Creeds, 663 ff.

39 Knox to Anna Lock, June 23, 1559, Kidd, 698.
of the Reformation, 357 ff.
Smith: The
Age
211
of August 24, 1560, the Scotch Parliament abolished

both papal jurisdiction and the mass, calling it "wickit
Idolatrie" and providing that "na maner of person
nor personis say Messe, nor yit heir Messe, nor be

present thairat under the pane of confiscatioune of all
movable and unmovable and puneissing of
thair gudis
thair bodeis at the discretioun of the magistrat."
commanded
officers are
to "tak diligent sute
quisitioun" to prevent it/^
of the same year
Christ Jesus
it is
All
In-
In the Scots Confession
said: "In the Supper richtlie used
becummis
so joined with us, that hee
is
and
very nurishment and fude of our saules
We
confesse and undoubtedlie beleeve that the faithful, in
body
and drinke the blude of the Lord Jesus that he remains
in them and they in him: Yea, they are so maid flesh
of his flesh and bone of his bones, that as the eternal
the richt use of the Lord's Table, do so eat the
Godhead has given
to the flesh of Christ Jesus
and immortalitie, so dois Christ Jesus his flesh and

blude eattin and drunkin be us, give us the same prelife
rogatives."
*^
heredity
that
is
One of the best established laws of

known as reversion to type; a certain
individual, sprung from recently developed stock,

shows the characteristics of remote ancestry. It almost seems that the ancestry of the "unco pious" Protestants at times harked back to a remoter civilization
than that of the Catholics.
The
Calvinistic
confession would have delighted Luther
Scots'
and Justin
Martyr, and, miitato niimine, the Thracian mystes of
Dionysus.
40Kidd, 702.
*i E. R. E., V. 560.
THE LAST PHASE
XIII.
It
is
Dogma
significant
that Harnack's great History
closes with the age of the Reformation.
of
Then
at Augsburg, at Trent, at Geneva, and at Westminster,

were fixed the official formulas of the faith of the main
Christian bodies.
These formulas have been rarely
set aside or radically altered
dred years; they
may
they are not often revised.
what
during the last three hunin new ways, but

we wish to find out
be interpreted
If
liberal Protestants or Catholic
thinking about the eucharist,
Modernists are
we no longer
find their
opinions written large in confessions and public debates, but lurking in treatises on church history or on
New
Testament
criticism.
In these works we do indeed discover that Christianity has become much rationalized.
The change, though silent, is so important
that Ernest Troeltsch and Edward Moore, among
others, are perfectly right in insisting that the greatest
break
in the continuity
not
the sixteenth but in the eighteenth century.
in
of historical Christianity came
this particular article of the eucharist
it is
that the large majority of Protestants are
In
safe to say
now Zwing-
lians or pure rationalists.

They not only hold the
bread and wine to be mere symbols but they are unable
to imagine how sensible people, and particularly how
Jesus and Paul, Luther and Calvin, ever regarded them
as anything else.
But along with growing rationalism there has of
THE LAST PHASE

late
been
sification
reason
213
in certain quarters a strong revival and intenof sacramentalism; a deliberate abnegation of
in the
mysteries of religion, and a deliberate cul-
and irrational. In the Roman

Catholic church the cult of the host has been plied with
such zeal that Leo XIII foretold that the holy eucharist
was destined to be the main object of devotion of
the twentieth century; and that Pius
has done his
tivation of the primitive
utmost to
have before me the

Ven'ite Adoremus Bulletin published semi-annually by
the Dominican nuns of the Covenant of the Holy
Name, 2824 Melrose Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, no. i,
August I, 1916. This bulletin is published in the ininterest of an association for the purpose of adoring
fulfill this
prophecy.^
the Blessed Sacrament, which
That
the association
is
perpetually exposed.
now has one thousand members
said to be "consoling proof that our Eucharistic
is
Lord here
in our midst is not without friends."

"Striking examples of direct answers to prayer" are
quoted, and a form of prayer prescribed in these
words: "Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament,

pray for us," with three hundred days indulgence to
the petitioner for each time that he utters it before the
exposed host. The writers "know that the practice of
exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is growing
throughout the world."
While there has been, of course, no change in the
dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church on this point,
some modification of them may be found in the creed
of the Old Catholics
who
split
from the main church
after the Vatican Council of 187

1
Note by
cises of St.
1.
Rickaby, S. J., in his edition of

Ignatius Loyola, 1915, p. 84.
J.
In their opinion
The
Spiritual Exer-
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
214
body and blood are truly present and the mass,

though not a sacrifice, has a sacrificial character as an
enduring memorial of the death of Christ.^
-The evolution of most Protestant bodies has been in
a liberal direction.
In the year 1720 the Protestant
Jacques Abbadie subjected the consecrated bread and
wine to a variety of tests to prove that they were
really what they seemed to be and had undergone no
chemical change. This work was translated, as docthe
trine necessary to be preached,
by an English evan-
gelical in 1867.^
Some theologians and philosophers have

new justifications for the old ways of
Thus Leibnitz found in the Newtonian theory
find
itation
presence.
tried to
liturgy.
of grav-
support of Luther's doctrine of the real

If, he argued, the sun can attract a grain
of sand on the earth, millions of miles away, thus acting at a distance, cannot Christ's body act at a distance
on the bread, thus enabling us to partake of the

Saviour's flesh and blood, even though they are far
from us ? *
For a certain section of the Lutheran church the
formula of Concord has done what the Council of
Trent did for the Catholics; it has bound their thought
in a rigid mould.
The latest orthodox Lutheran theologtan, while rejecting the
words "consubstantiation,"
"impanation," and "subpanation," and while regarding

the mode of divine operation as an inscrutable mystery,
accepts both the real presence and the ubiquity theory
2
Mirbt, 437.
3 J.
J.
II.
Abbadie: Chemical Change
W. Hamersly. 1867.
4W. E. H. Lecky: History
571.
in
the
Eucharist,
translated
by
of England in the iSth Century, 1878,

have searched Leibnitz's works for the passage, but in vain.
THE LAST PHASE

of Christ's body.
says,
Jesus
215
present everywhere, he
is
"in the unity and entirety of his theanthropic
when and where he
person, and especially present
wills
For the author the sacred food itself has the

same old magic and the Supper is called "a means of
to be,"
applying redemption."
But while these views still obtain in the conservative Lutheran circles, especially in America, there are
branches of the same church, particularly in Germany,
where the great Reformer's specific doctrines have
fallen into what Grisar calls "automatic dissolution"
Many German
(Selbstauflosung).*'
feel that there
principles
was
theologians
now
a contradiction between Luther's
and many of the
from the old church.

judgment annihilates
beliefs
Thus
his
his later
which he took over
appeal to the private
appeal to authority; his
by faith really destroys the

sacramental theory which, illogically, he attempted to
impose on his followers.^ If he denied transubstantiation he kept a miracle equally irrational; and he supported his theory of the real presence with hypotheses
which a modern theologian calls "Chrlstologlcal monstrosities." ^
In fine, the advanced German Christian
thought is now in favor of giving up the sacraments
entirely, in the first place as repugnant to the teachings
of science, and secondly as contradicting the fundamental ideas of Protestantism, "the Word," and faith.
principle of justification
Whereas
In
many
Protestant sects the
real presence has been silently

5
6
Valentine, ii, 335, 344, 356

Grisar, ii, 389 ff.
Harnack,
Loofs, p. 920.
R. G. G., i. 78.
iii,
868.
f.
dogma
abandoned,
in a
of the
few
It
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
2i6
has been either

the creeds.
repudiated or dropped from
officially
The
Socinians, In the
Racovlan Catechism
of 1609, expressely rejected the Catholic, Lutheran,
and
Calvlnistic doctrines of the eucharlst,
In
order to put the whole emphasis on
and
called
The Quakers,
the rite merely symbolic and memorial.
faith,
abolished
When
Ralph Waldo Emerson

proposed to do the same, on the ground that the material act was now a positive hindrance to piety, he
found the Unitarians unable to follow him, and therefore gave up the ministry.^^
But though they still
celebrate the Supper, the Unitarians demand no article
of faith on this or any other subject from their adherents, and other churches, such as the Baptists and
Congregatlonalists,^^ seem to be completely silent on
the question of the real presence, which Is doubtless
answered in the negative by nearly all of their members.^*
The Christian Scientists, under the influence
of the New England transcendalists, use no bread and
wine in their communion, but teach: "Our bread Is
the rite altogether.
truth.
Our cup
is
the cross."
^^^
In churches of the Anglican communion there

large body of evangelical
eucharlst
symbolically.
some support among the
members who
Though
this
is
interpret the
view
has
still
theologians,^^ the trend of
I'^Harnack: Dogmengeschichte, iii, 756 f.

1^ . R. E., V, 564.
Confession of the Friends, 1675, Schaff: Creeds,
iii,
797.
12 R.
W. Emerson: The Lord's Supper.

Second Church of Boston, September g, 1832.
13
Sermon before
the
very short Congregational Creed, with no statement on this

was adopted about 1912.
1* The real presence is not mentioned in the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of 1833; Schaff: Creeds, iii, 747.
1*^ S. Mathews and S. B. Smith: Dictionary
of Religion and
subject,
Ethics, 1921, p. 89.

1^
G.
Hodges: Everman's Religion, 1812,
p.
247,
writes:
"The
THE LAST PHASE

prelatical opinion
is
now
217
strongly in the direction of
sacramentalism and a "high" doctrine of the eucharist

or "mass." The Tractarian Movement of the Nineteenth century started this re-action which, in so far as
it concerned the eucharist was represented by a sermon
by Edward Bouverie Pusey, on "The Presence of
Christ in the
Holy Eucharist," preached
order to defend his thesis of "a
in
1853.
In
real, objective pres-
two other works, which had a considerable vogue and doubtless brought the church of
England back to her sixteenth-century position/" Indeed, the late Frederic Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a Charge to his Clergy, delivered in 1898,
ence," he published
stated that the Anglican theory of the real presence
was hard
from the Lutheran doctrine of

consubstantiation. This statement, according to Hensley Henson, now Bishop of Hereford, was received
by the Anglican "Catholics," "in disgust of the sugto distinguish
gestion that they stood in the matter of eucharistic
doctrine with the protagonist of Protestantism."
"
So far has the high church doctrine gone that an

episcopal clergyman recently told me that he thought
no "Zwinglian" ought to be allowed to communicate
in his church.
The same priest elevated the "host,"
communicated alone, and spoke of "the sacrifice of the
mass."
More
extraordinary than the re-action of the

the fact that the same sacramentalism
has received some support in liberal quarters.
Mrs.
conservatives
is
Humphrey Ward's
novel, Richard Meynel, portrays
sentence ('this is my body') is but a symbol, and for us a remote and

difficult symbol, of participation and intimacy."
16 The Doctrine
The Real Presence
of the Real Presence, 1855.
the Doctrine of the Church of En ff land, 1857.
C. Lambert, 277, note i.
1'' J.
.
CHRISTIAN THEOPHAGY
21
a priest
who combines
vanced
liberal views.
high liturgical practices with ad-
The
best defense of this posi-
come to my attention is that given by

Professor Kirsopp Lake/* According to him the saction that has
raments should be taken not as assertions of historical

judgments of spiritual value. There are
some men, he says, who go through life seeing nothing
but the happenings; there are others who see through
the events a deep inner meaning. The sacraments, it
truth, but as
is
said,
express the great truths of the inner
outward form.
Lake pointed
to a
The
and
in
error in this view, as Professor
out, lies in the limitation of such values
few things; any experience

More and more, the
a value.
men
life
in life
might have such
rationalist
are finding the needs of their inner
would add,
life
supplied,
and
and less and less in the repetition of outworn
survivals from a primeval state.
their value-judgments given, in poetry, in art,
in science,
^8 In a lecture delivered
School on Aug. 23, 1921.
before
the
Harvard Divinity Summer
INDEX
Abbadie, J., 214
Abercius, 34
Actaeon, 36
Affelmann, J., 199
Agape, 47 f, 59 f
Agricola, J., 160
Ailly, Peter d', 96,
Aino, 28
Beham,
Beham,
B.,
S.,
129
129
Bell, H., 206 f
Berengar, 82
Bern Disputation, 197

99, loi,
107
Albert, Duke of Prussia, 170

Alcuin, 89
Aleander, iii
Allen W., 207

Ambrose, 80 f, 89, iii
Amsdorf, Nicholas von, 146
Anabaptists, 164
Anglican Church, 216 f
Apocalypse, 44, 59
Apostolic Church Order, 76
Apuleius, 41
Aquinas, 84, loi, 107, 183
Arabs, religion of, 26
Aricia, 35
Aristotle, 79, loi f
Bible, 84; exegesis of, 49, 53

Biel, G., 96
Billican, T., 129 f
Blaurer, A., 169, 171, 175, 199
Blood, religious ideas about, 41
Bohemian Brethren, 97 f, loi, 126,
177
of Common Prayer, 209
Bousset, W., 54
Book
Boyneburg, 204
Brahmans, 29
Brenz,
J., 147, 159

Brittany, 76, 94
Bucer, M., 1671!; and Carlstadt,
128, 167; at Marburg, 159, 168;
and Luther, 167 ff; and Oecolampadius, 169; and Melanchthon, 169, 171, 179; tries to
compromise, 173 reforms Cologne, 179 f; and Calvin, 191;

in England, 205
Bugenhagen, J., 145 f, 164, 196,
Armenia, 47
Asklepios, 41
Athens, 37
Attis, 33, 42, 47, 73
Augsburg,
Diet of (1530), 116,

168 f; Confession, 116 f, 121,
161 f, 185 flF; Interim, 186.
Augustine, 81 f, 106 f, 156, 168
Australian religion, 27
Aztecs, 28 f
Bullinger, H., 177, 179, 199, 205
Buru, 28
Caesarius of Heisterbach, 90
Cajetan, Cardinal, 118, 147 f
Calvin, J., 190 ff; on Paul, 51;
and Westphal,
at Ratisbon, 121
186; and Melanchthon, 187, 192
ff
tries to take middle position,
and Bucer, 191; and
191 ff;
Luther, 192 ff; and Zwingli,
190 ff; against Lutherans, 199;
influence in England, 205
Campeggio, 118
Canon Law, 84
Capito, W. F., 128, 131, 133, 144,
162, 176
Carus, P., 9
;
Bacon, B. W., 69
Bacon, F., 86
Baden, Conference at, 153
Baptism, 34
Baptists, 216
Barnes, R., 202
Baronius, 89
Basle, Council of, 98
Conference
;
at,
176
Baur, F. C, 58
Bede, 89
INDEX
220
Carlstadt,
Luther,
controversy with
113, 126 ff, 180;
reforms Wittenberg, 122 ff; denies real presence, 126 ff; recants, 133; and Zwingli, 141 f
Cheremiss, 27
A.,
103,
Chios, 39
Christian, Prince of Norway, 164
Christianity, and Mithraism, 33
and Orphism, 40 f; and the

Mystaris, 43 ff, 51 early charges
against, 55; Jewish, 58 ff
Christopher, St., 73
Chrysostom, 51, 75, 80, 160
Cicero, 42
Clement of Alexandria, 72 f, 79
;
Clement of Rome,
56, 71
Cochlaeus, J., iii f, 116

Cologne, Synod of, 89 f
Reformation of 179 f
Congregationalists, 216
Consensus Tigurinus, 198 f
Consubstantiation, 8, 95 ff, 99, 107,
207, 214 f
Contarini, 121
;
Conybeare, F. C, 51, 56
Corpus Christi, Feast of,
37, 85
f,
146
Coverdale, M., 205

Crete,
36, 38
Cumont, F., 9
Cup, in communion, given to or
withdrawn from
99,
108,
III
ff,
the laity, 85
123 ff
156, 160
ff,
Cyprian, 44, 73 f,
Cyril of Jerusalem, 73, 75, 80, 160
Damascus,
52,
59
Dante, 93
Delfino, 187
Delphi, 37 f
Demeter, 37
Denmark, Frederic
164
Didache, 60, 66
Didascalia, 74
Dionysus, 36 ff
Docetae, 64
J.,
116
f,
Emser, J., 116, 145

Ephesus, 46, 48, 59, 64
ff
154
Erasmus, 91, 137 f, 148 ff
Essenes, 48
Eucharist, history of the doctrine
CTTiowtos) 45
f>
of, 8, passim
Eugenius IV, Pope, 90
Euripides, 38
ff
Eusebius of Caesarea, 74
Farel, W., 196
Fasting, 28
First-fruits, 27
ff
Fish, symbol of
Fisher, J., 148
Christ,
33
f,
63
Flensburg, Disputation at, 164

of Concord, 188 f
Fox, E., 203
Frazer, Sir J. G., 27 ff
Frederic, Elector of Saxony, 123
Formula
Gardner, P.,
Geneva, 197
51,
ff
70
Gerbel, N., 128, 131, 144, 153

Glaber, R., 91
Gnostics, 44, 70, 79
God, primitive ideas of, 24 f
Grail, 93 f
Greek Catholic Church, 33
Greek religion, 35 ff
Gregory I the Great, Pope, 82
Gregory VII, Pope, 91
Gregory of Nyssa, 80, 90
Grisar, H., 215
Hagenau, Conference
I.,
Durand, 95
EcK,
Egypt, 31 f
Eleusinian Mysteries, 37
Emerson, R. W., 216
130, 147
King
^^
of,
Hamlet, 35
Haner, J., 154
Hansk, M.,98
Harnack, A. von,
at, 177 f
85 f, 89, 100,
200, 212
Heath, N., 203
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 60 f, 139
Hedio, C, 153, 156, 159

Hegge, J., 164
Henry
Henry
IV, Emperor, 87
VII, Emperor, 92
INDEX
Henry
VIII,
iiof, 202 ff
King
England,
of
Henson, H. H., 217

Hermas, Shepherd of, 60
Hermetic Literature, 57
Hetzer, L., 146
Hilarius, 156, 160
Hindoos, 29 f
Hippol)ûs, 36
n.,
Lucas von Prag, 103 n

Lucian, 34
Luke, writings of, 45, 59, 61 ff, 76
Luther, M., 99-185; exegesis of,
26 n; growing conservatism, 70;
on etymology of mass, 89 opposes Catholics, 99-121 controversy with Carlstadt, 126-136;
does not appeal to reason, 99 f;
his agonies, 104; faith,
106;
controversy with Zwingli, 142 ff,
176 f; at Marburg, 158 ff; and
Schwenckfeld, 165 f; and Bucer,
167 ff; Short Confession, 180;
126, 141
Incas, 28
Indians (American), 27
Innocent III, Pope, 87
and Melanchthon, 183

ence in England, 202
Inquisition, 31
Irenaeus, 73, 79, 156, 160

Isis, 32, 41, 54
Italian Protestants, 179, 201
43
f,
Mana, 24
92
religion, 44 f, 48
believed to blaspheme host,
^
93
John the Apostle, 62

John the Baptist's Disciples,
of,
158
ff,
168
Marcourt, A. de, 197

Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 201
Mark, Gospel of, 58, 61 ff
Martyr, P., 186
Mary, images of, eaten, 30 f
Mass, 23
sacrifice of, 23, 56 ff
;
46,
48, 59, 64 ff
John, Gospel and Epistles of, 62
Jonas, J., 116, 123 f, 178, 187
Jud, L., 141, 150, 170
Jude, Epistle of, 45, 48, 59
Jupiter, 34
Justin Martyr, 33, 71 f
Karg, 188
Marburg, Colloquy
Jewish
Jews
influ-
ff;
ff
Magic, 85, 89 ff
Malas, 30
Malory, Sir T., 92
James, the Apostle, 62

James, epistle of, 45, 59
Jerome, 8i
Jerusalem, 58 f
f,
55, 83 f
Loisy, A., 43, 61

Lombard, P., 146
Loofs, F., 189
Ignatius, 71
Jesus, 7
Lake, K., 53, 218

Lateran Council, Fourth,
Leibnitz, G. W., 214
Licinius of Tours, 77
Lindsay, T. M., 181
Lithuania, 27
Hoen, see Honius

Hoensbroech, Count, 30
Hoffman, M., 164
Holtzmann, O., 60
Honius, C, 96, 103
Hooker, J., 206
Hooper, J., 205
Horn, 206
Horus, 54
Huguenots, 88
Huss, J., 97
221
ff
99 ff, 108 ff, 120, 122, 138 f,

208; the word, 89, 139; as a
good work, 99 ff private, 115 ff,
61,
123
ff
Matthew, Gospel of, 63

Maulbron, Debate at, i88
McGiffert, A. C, 195, 200
Melaine of Rennes, 77
Melanchthon, 113, 183 ff; on etymology of mass, 89
prefers
;
Keller, M., 129
Catholics
Knox, J., 210 f

Krautwald, V., 165
i84f;
sion,
to
and
121
Zwinglians,
116,
Augsburg Confesreforms Wittenberg,
INDEX
222
122 S, 183; and Carlstadt, 131;

and Oecolampadius, 138, 171 f,
185; at Marburg, 158 ff; and
Bucer, 169, 171; and Wittenberg
Concord, 175; reforms Cologne,
179; and Luther, 181, 183 flE;
on artolatry, 187; influence in
England, 203
Milton, J., 207
Mithraism, 32 f, 72
Monophysite Church, 47
Moore, E. C, 212
Morone, 178
Phrygia, 33
Pico della Mirandola, 96
Pirckheimer, W., 145, 149
Pirke Aboth, 49 f
Miinzer, T., 132

Murner, T., 109
Murray, Gilbert,
Myconius,
F.,
35, 39
204
Mystery Religions,
7,
31
ff,
36
ff,
51, 56
Neobulus, 173
154
Recognitions,
57
Pusey, E. B., 217
OcKAM, William
Odes of Solomon,
of, 95
46, 64,
67
Oecolampadius, J., 137-163; and
Luther, 131, 142 ff, 180; character, 138; reforms, 141; and
real
rejects
Carlstadt,
142;
presence, 146 ff; at Marburg.
159 ff; and Schwenckfeld, 165;
and Bucer, 169; and Melanchf,
185
Old Catholics, 213
"Q," A SOURCE OF THE GoSPELS OF

Matthew and Luke, 8., 44 ff,
59
Quakers, 216
Radbert, 82
90
Raphael Sanzio, 92
Ratisbon, Colloquy of, I2i
Ratramnus, 82 f
Paul,
Real Presence, passim, 7
55 f; Luther, 99 ff; Carlstadt,
I26ff
Reformation, 7 f 102, 212
Reinach, S., 43 n., 49 n
;
Orestes, 35
Origen, 46
Orphism,
f,
Plato, 37
Pliny, 37, 72
Plummer, A., 52
Plutarch, 38
Prophery, 31
Protestantism, 200
Pseudo-Clementine
Nigeria, 27
Nilus, 26
Nimes, 76
thon, 171
Paulicians, 74
Peebles, R. J., 77 n
Pellican, C, 151
Pentz, G., 129
Persia, 32
Peter, the Apostle, 58
Peter, Epistles of, 45, 47, 59
Philip the Evangelist, 76
Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, 158,
171
Philo, 45, 67 f
36, 39 f
Osiris, 32, 54
Reitzenstein, R., 51, 53 f

Religion, primitive, 22 ff
Paraclesus, 151
Parsimonius, J., 199
Reuchlin, 89
Rhegius, U., 129, 173
Robertson, A., 52
Osiander, 51, 159
Paul, the Apostle, originates the

Eucharist, 7, 43 ff, 78 f; on the
first-fruits, 28
First Epistle to
the Corinthians, 48 f; his visknew the Mysteries,
ions, 49 ff
51 ff; 56 f; contests with the
Jewish Christians, 58 ff; Epistle
to the Collosians, 61
;
Rome,
33
ff
Sacrament,
37,
40
Sallustius, 47
Savonarola, G.,
90
f,
72
Schenck, 199
Schmalkaldic Articles, 119

Schmidt, C, 44
INDEX
Schnepf, 171
Schweitzer, A., 62
Schwenckfeld, C. von, 134, 164
180, 193
Scotus, Duns, 105, 154
Sex and religion, 25 f
Siena, 30
Smith, William Benjamin, 52
Smith, William Robertson, 26
Smith, Winifred, 30 n
Smythe, R., 205
Socinians, 216
Soden, H. Freiherr von, 63
Sparta, 31
Spengler, L., 129
Spenser, E., 206
Stephen of Bourbon, 90
Strauss, J., 146
Stiibner, M. T., 183
Sturm, J., 158
Sweden, 27
J.,
Tunstall, C, 204
Turner, W., 206
Tyndale, W., 204,
ff,
Ulrich,
Duke of Wurttemberg,
Unitarians, 216
'
Valangin, 197
Valentine, M., 214 f
Veddas, 30
Waldenses,
88
Ward, Mrs.
H., 217 f
Watt, J., 193

Wessel, J., 96
Westminster, Synod of, 210
Westphal, J., i86
Wittenberg Concord, 174 f
Wolferinus, S., 178
Women
in the early church, 75
Wrede, W., 51
Wurttemberg Concord,
Taboo, 24
Taylor,
223
209 f
Temple, F., 217

Tenedos, 39
Wyclif, 45
Tertullian, 33, 48, 59, 63, 75, 194
Yorkshire, 27
f,
96
f,
ff
171
107
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 57
Theophylact, 160
Thomas, Acts of, 70
Thronaki, 74
f,
74
Totemism, 25 ff
Tractarian Movement, 217
Transubstantiation, 8, 78 ff; rejected by Wyclif, 97
rejected
by Luther, 106 f; rejected by
Zwingli, 139; rejected by the
English Reformers, 209
Trent, Council of, 43 n, 44 n, 85 ff,
186 f
Troeltsch, E., 212
;
Zadokites, 52
Zeus, 37 f
Zurich, 170, 182
Zwilling, G., 122 f
Zwingli, Ulrich, 137-163; on etymology of mass, 89 and Luther,
131, 170, 176 f, 180; character,
137; reforms, 138 ff; rejects
real presence, 141 ff; and Carlstadt, 141 f; at Marburg, 150 ff,
185; and Schwenckfeld, i66;
and Bucer, 170; and Calvin,
190 ff
Zwinglians, 116
;
Py"["
Theolpgical Seminary Libraries
_L1012 01195 6960

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^^RY or PRiNCf^

The Open Court Publishing Company

United States of America

All Rights Reserved

THE TORCH PRESS

27, 19 15, I read,

York, a paper on "The

ception that the

of the sacrifice of the mass,

the Reformers, and the

of the Real Presence, repudiated by

more ancient than

that they were, in fact, the

teachings of the primitive church, and that, push-

our inquiry ever further back, they had

divinity, arose at the

revived by the mystic cults of the Greeks, and

them was borrowed by Paul and implanted, along

in the soil of the early church.

eign to Jesus, whose beautiful, ethical, and almost

purely Jewish thought shines on us in

Q the source of the sayings reported by Matthew

and Luke but not found in the other gospels

adopted and became fixed in the ritual and creed

four centuries of the

no longer seemed natural.

stantiation, in consubstantiation, in the various ex-

evolved by the Reformers,

the words: "This

grasp the mystery of

As, in the contro-

versies following Luther's revolt, the matter re-

ceived the most thorough discussion that

received, the period of the Reformation bulks large

After the sixteenth century,

was new or important was said upon the

rationalists the matter ceased to attract attention.

There have, indeed, been a few modern

torians have been content to let the subject

not worth study.

they have been wrong;

Franz Cumont says in the introduction to

often as instructive as the history of his successes.

present study will be accepted,

purely objective history in the

spread, and no cause to serve save that of

was complete by the end

After keeping the manuscript for nearly a

with the statement that they would publish

public in the Monist of April, 191 8, but the

rush of business due to the war, and the sad inter-

ruption caused by Dr. Carus's death, have post-

poned the publication of the whole until the present.

the subject and have revised the manuscript in the

reading the proof

The British Reformers

Abbadie: Chemical change

in the Eucharist, in four letters

ing the relation of faith to sense.

Allen: The Age of Erasmus. Oxford. 1914vols.

of the Gospel at Basile

Bancrafte: The Answer that the Preachers

London. 1548. (Imperfect copy at Union Seminary).

William Barlowe, chanon,